


lotus bird sigils and fairy dust leaves

by ficteer



Category: Ookiku Furikabutte | Big Windup!
Genre: Alternate Universe - Witches, Fake/Pretend Relationship, Gardens & Gardening, M/M, Magic
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-03-05
Updated: 2017-05-13
Packaged: 2018-03-16 11:57:55
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 40,793
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3487418
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ficteer/pseuds/ficteer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>If Abe had known starting a garden would require saving the world first, he probably would have at least bought better shoes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. chime of the golden bell

**Author's Note:**

> so, wtss is finished, and i need something light-hearted to work on in the midst of apocalypse shenanigans in my other big fics. luckily for me, i got punched in the face by this au at the perfect time. (sorry for the mess, twitter.)
> 
> while this is a witch au, i'm pulling from cultures all over the world for inspiration. no resemblance to any one religion or area is intended, so please don't think this is representative of one particular type. my oof witches are not a religious group. please do your research before poking into actual real life stuff, please! all gardening aspects of the fic, however, are completely accurate.
> 
> enjoy!!

The moment Abe Takaya pulled up through the hell-bent rain to the small house he hadn’t seen outside of pictures for almost two decades, he knew, somehow, this was going to be more than he’d bargained for.

He put his car in park on the muddy dirt drive and let his forearms rest on the steering wheel, a heavy breath huffing out of his lungs through his nose before he popped open his door. He took the keys to stop the annoying dinging, and also because on the second-largest ring was a single silver gift left to him by his uncle whose face he couldn’t remember but who had, apparently, remembered him well enough to will him the house and all the land that came with it.

Abe pulled his hood up over his head, ears filling with the sound of heavy drops hitting the plastic and not his hair. He stared down at the ground as he walked, wary of the footing that seemed to have been lost with heavy rainfalls washing out the path to the door. His new home did, however, have a cute little front porch, and when he got to the covered wrap-around, he pulled his hood back and shook his hair free of the few drops that had snuck under.

It was a cute house, he thought. It was in good repair despite the fact that his uncle had been in poor health the past few years, though the pictures of the inside had it looking about as outdated as he’d expected for a house this age. The front door was old too, probably original, but when he slid the key in the deadbolt, it turned effortlessly. Recently rekeyed, then, he thought, turning the handle and stepping inside.

His rain boots made heavy muffled noises with an occasional squeak on the old hardwoods, and it wasn’t too much warmer inside than it had been out in the rain. The old man’s estate executor had probably turned off all the utilities after he’d gotten all the inspections taken care of before deciding to move in, he mused, eyes taking in every square foot carefully. The ceiling looked good even with the rain, and it was new enough not to have problems. He looked over to the walls, lifting his thumb and peeling at a seam of old pineapple-emblazoned wallpaper. That would _definitely_ need to go. Positively glad now that he’d listened to his mother and scheduled for the painters to come in tomorrow.

The sound of the moving truck pulling up the driveway tugged Abe out of his house and back into the action of the moment, and within a couple of hours, every box and piece of furniture was sort of in the right room, with the few miscellaneous boxes dumped into the living room for him to sort through, eventually. The truck and the two movers drove off, leaving him standing in a much-less empty home all alone. He walked into the kitchen first, then into the little utility-slash-mud-slash-laundry room, flipping the switch for the electricity to come back on. With a loud click, the lights came on, and in the room over, the fridge started humming just beneath a loud beep of the microwave demanding for him to reset the time.

His mother had sent him with a few bags of groceries to get him started since she hadn’t been able to come herself, and he put them into the fridge first after cleaning it out with a grimace when he’d opened it and taken a moment to recover from stale fridge smell. He’d go to the little grocery store in town and get some baking soda or something, he thought, looking around for a bit of scrap paper to start a shopping list. He scrawled down ‘baking soda’, then ‘beer’.

With an exhale, Abe closed his eyes as he tried to think of anything else he needed right away, only to realize that here, the small town was so quiet that he could hear the rain hitting his roof and plinking down through the gutters. He looked out the window that was above his sink, out over the small garden plat that made up a good bit of his backyard (his _fenced_ backyard, he thought, along with the triumphant realization that he could _finally_ get a _dog_ ). There was a good deal of mist that swirled with the rain and made it sort of difficult to see too far, the small forest surrounding his home ( _his_ home) just barely more than a black smudge through a dirty window and sheeting rain and 

\- and _what the hell was that?!_

Abe’s spine straightened when he saw - a _person_ , he realized, visible over his yard and the cute little stone fence, a person just at the edge of his woods. The hair on the back of his neck stood, his first thought that someone was _creeping_ on him, but when he lifted his hand and used his sleeve to clear some of the condensation off the window, he noticed that the person’s back was to him, his hand resting on the trunk of one of the many trees. He was soaking wet from standing out in the rain, his dark jacket and lacy scarf plastered to his shoulders, and blond hair slicked to his head. And then, just as Abe decided to go outside to ask him what the _hell_ he was doing standing out in the rain by someone’s house like a damn stalker, the blond’s head turned on a snap and Abe swore, for just a moment, that he locked eyes with a gaze that burned gold.

When Abe blinked once, the guy was gone as if he’d never been there. He stood over his sink, blinking rapidly at the space in the trees where the blond had been, peering around for a few minutes to no avail. The person, if he’d really been there at all, was gone now. Clutching his forearms over the newly-raised goosebumps, Abe pulled away from his window, then thought second of it and locked the back door on the other side of the kitchen before he walked back into his home to continue unpacking.

By the time his stomach and watch told him that he’d been working far past dinner time with no food, Abe had managed to pull all the nasty wallpaper down in the living room with much more difficulty than his internet search had led him to believe he’d have. He stuffed all the pineapple grossness into a bag and put it by the front door to take out later when the rain wasn’t coming down so hard. He grabbed a cup of ramen and stuck it in the microwave, peering back out the window while he cooked it, then ate in silence on his kitchen floor as his table was currently holding more boxes than he cared to move at the moment.

After he ate, Abe cleaned out the cabinets in his kitchen and put away all of the non-perishables he’d brought with him, and started on his few dishes. His toaster came next, then utensils, and then pots his parents had bought him on sale as a house warming gift in the hopes he’d learn to use them. He stared down at them in apprehension, then put them into the cabinet and put the rice cooker on the counter. That, at least, he could mostly handle. Mostly.

His kitchen almost completely put away, Abe looked down at his watch and saw that despite it not being too late, he was exhausted. He went into his bedroom and cleared out some boxes to look for his shower supplies, then stripped and walked into the bathroom attached to his room. It had a nice bath, he noticed, setting it to fill while he sat down to get clean. As soon as all the grime from moving sank down the drain, he got in the bath, sinking in up to his chin and sighing out in pleasure. His head tilted back, and he stared at the ceiling, which kind of needed a new coat of paint too, or maybe to be cleaned, but it was _his_. A thrill of delight went through him at the thought, and he grinned, sinking into the water until he was blowing bubbles through his nose.

He crawled out of the bath when he was red and pruned at the fingertips, pulling a sheet on his mattress where it sat bare in the middle of the floor and collapsing on top. Looking over his garden was a long wall of windows and a sliding glass door that led onto the small porch that wrapped around the back. He could put a koi pond there, he thought, staring out over the weed-filled garden and the grass that was probably up to his shins.

 _“You can sell the extra at the market, but make sure to keep enough for yourself, too. It’ll be good to grow your own food, Taka,”_ his mother had said when they’d gotten the notice of inheritance. He’d disagreed at first, because gardening had sounded dull and like a lot of work, but after reading so many books and doing research, and now that he was lying here, staring out over the little plot of land that was more than enough to feed him (maybe even one or two more), there was a kind of quiet excitement in his gut. Not enough to pierce through the sleepy exhaustion heavy in his bones, but enough that he closed his eyes and burrowed his face into his pillow, eager for the next day to start.

\----------

It took Abe three weeks to get completely settled into his home, every box unpacked and most things where he sort of wanted them. Everything was painted and new, the floors scrubbed and his meager furniture in place. He even had a few pieces of decoration in the form of a pathetic-looking houseplant in his kitchen window and an old family picture his mother had taken on Abe’s graduation day, courtesy of a quick trip to Shun’s apartment in Tokyo. Neither his parents nor his brother had made the trip out to Nishiura yet, unable to make the timing work, so Abe had spent the three weeks putting in the hard work to get the place into a less embarrassing state for when they _did_  come. 

Three weeks of hard work and _rain_. Even the weatherman seemed a bit perplexed about the endlessly unchanging weather, Abe noticed while sipping his morning cup of coffee at his table while the news was going. Springtime showers were not uncommon, according to the report, but things were a bit ridiculous and please take care going in to work in the morning, especially around the dirt roads up in the hills, and that one place on the other side of town where the bridge always kind of washes out.

Abe bit into his bagel, chewing slowly and staring at the report for another few days of rain. He thought about his plot, which was sopping wet and muddy and probably pretty good for planting. Probably. At least he wouldn’t have to water stuff, he thought, licking the side of his thumb for a sliver of cream cheese when he tucked the last of his bagel into his mouth. Besides, his home was put together, and he had money from the inheritance, yes, but not so much that he could afford to buy so much food when he’d planned on just growing it himself and selling the extra for profit at the little market that came on Saturdays in the town square.

With a sigh, Abe clicked off his television and stood, walking over to his front door and putting his shoes on. He grabbed his raincoat, then stepped out onto his front porch, locking his door behind him. Pulling his hood up over his head, an action that was getting frighteningly reflexive, he jogged out to his car and hopped in.

The drive down to the town market was ten minutes down a dirt road (a careful drive, in case any of it had washed out in the rain), then ten more on the long stretch through the forest and down to the quiet town of Nishiura. It wasn’t exactly where Abe had pictured himself living when he was young, but when the rain finally quit and he could bike there, it would be nice. It wasn’t even that far from Saitama proper, only about an hour’s drive if he really needed it.

Abe parked in front of the general store, walking briskly inside and shaking off in the doorway. There was a young woman putting away bottles of hummingbird food who looked up when he stepped inside, a charming grin splitting her face as soon as he pulled his hood down.

“Welcome! We don’t get too many new visitors here. I’m Shinooka Chiyo. How can I help you?” she said, stepping forward to stand in front of him with an armful of the bottles.

“I’ve got a garden in my backyard and I’m looking to start growing some produce and stuff,” Abe said, pulling out the piece of paper he’d stuffed in his pocket before leaving. He’d looked it all up beforehand - the hardiness zone, which plants would work well in this climate, and which ones would be hard if not impossible to grow. As he unfolded it though, he looked up to see Shinooka humming thoughtfully.

“Let’s see… I think I’ve got some ideas that’ll be good for a beginner,” she said, putting the box down and beckoning for Abe to follow. She led the way out to the back, where there was a plant nursery with displays of seeds and enough plants and flowers that Abe felt a little dizzy, suddenly, at all the choices. “Herbs grow really well, and rosemary especially doesn’t need much attention at all. I’ll get super big and smell nice, and you don’t need to do anything besides water it,” she said, gesturing towards the small prickly plant. “Bell peppers are easy too, and so are cucumbers. You just let them be alone, water them, and you’ll get good produce in no time. Oh, you’ll want to pick the cucumbers before they get too big though, or else they don’t taste as good.”

“Huh, okay,” Abe said, taking a pen out of his pocket and scribbling down on his little sheet of paper _don’t let cucumbers get too big_. He’d have enough trouble making stuff edible without mother nature helping him out.

“Tomatoes and beans are pretty easy too, but you’ll need cages for the tomatoes and poles for the beans. They’re easy to make, though, so still worth it,” Shinooka continued, and Abe looked nervously at the tomatoes that apparently needed cages to be contained. Maybe he’d think twice about getting those, even if they were easy to take care of. “Then you’ve got your bushes and trees, which’ll take a while to give you anything but you don’t have to take care of them at all. Figs grow well here, and they make a good jam. Blueberries you’ll need at least two bushes to do anything, and blackberries are kinda prickly so I don’t like to have them in my yard, personally.”

Abe’s wrist started feeling a little cramped from all the notes he was taking down, until finally he seemed to have gotten most of what Shinooka had said in chicken-scratch shorthand. Some of this he’d heard already through his research, but it felt good knowing there were plants even he could handle. He looked at the seeds thoughtfully, but Shinooka waved her hands in front of her chest.

“Don’t go with seeds right now,” she said, sighing out. “Normally, starting from seeds is cheaper, but it’s a little late in the season for that, plus they’ll just get washed out with all this rain.”

“Is it always like this in the spring?” Abe asked, and Shinooka shook her head glumly.

“No, it’s really weird, actually. It rains a lot in the spring, yeah, but not for weeks straight like this.” She then laughed, a hand raising to cover her mouth and muffle the noise. “I’m starting to wonder if I should go ask one of the witches for help!”

Abe blinked. “Witches?”

Shinooka tilted her head, lowering her hand to clasp the both of them in front of her. “Oh, yeah, you’re new here, so I guess you wouldn’t know,” she said, looking around to make sure they were alone in the back nursery and leaning in to continue in a somewhat softer voice. “According to legend, Nishiura has always been the home to witches who are said to have special ties to nature. Story goes that Nishiura used to be a barren wasteland, but the witches came here to start a town where they could be safe. They keep the balance so we can grow things and in return, the people of Nishiura make sure that they’re always protected from harm.” Shinooka leaned back, eyes wide and smile bright. “Well, that’s if you believe it, anyway. I’ve lived in Nishiura since I was a little girl but I’ve never met a witch. It’s more just a saying, I think.”

Abe nodded in agreement. Old superstitions to explain bad weather, or a bad harvest. He looked down at his notes, then over to the tiny sprouts all around him. He had a lot of work to do and he was burning daylight - not that there was a single beam of it in the sky. “All right. I’ll get what I want and bring it up front.”

Shinooka nodded, and Abe grabbed a push cart, loading it up with two of everything in case he accidentally killed something. He looked down at his selection of bell peppers, rosemary, basil, cucumbers, beans, _one_ tomato, three blueberry bushes (they were on sale, apparently), and one tiny little scrawny stick that said it was someday going to be a fig tree. He looked over at the other plants, the ones that Shinooka had passed when giving Abe the tour of the beginner plants, and he sighed out. Someday.

It was a touch more expensive than he thought, and he declined Shinooka’s offer to help him put the plants in the car. He loaded them up on the tarp he placed to keep dirt out, then drove down to the grocery store to pick up some milk and bread. He looked at the vegetables, which were cheaper than they were in the city, but - he did the math quickly in his head - four weeks of buying them here would cost as much as the entire season’s worth he’d just tucked into his backseat. Well, that was assuming he didn’t kill anything, he thought sourly, about to head to the cheese when he ran straight into someone coming down the aisle.

“Sor - hey!” Abe said, voice changing to a hiss when he looked down at the guy standing in front of him and seeing blond hair with wide hazel eyes tinged with anxiety. He even had the same forest green coat and the white lacy scarf, layered over a yellow knitted sweater with a white and black bird on the front. Definitely the same guy. “Are you following me?!”

“Wh - ? I’m…? No?” the blond responded jerkily, shoulders hitching up to his ears and blood falling from his face when Abe leaned in.

“You were standing in my backyard!” he said, watching as the blond flinched and then, in a blink of an eye, rocketed down the aisle he’d come out of. Abe seethed, staring after him and wondering if he should follow to shake some answers out of him, but a quick glance showed that the idiot had dropped his basket and was probably long gone out of the store.

Before Abe could do much more than realize that people were staring at him for the scene that idiot had caused, someone came forward and scooped the abandoned basket from off the ground. The newcomer’s blue eyes and freckled face didn’t look at him until after he stood, and it was then that Abe realized that it wasn’t just freckles, but acne scars, years old.

“Good job. Day one, and you’re yelling at the poor kid in the middle of the grocery store,” the guy said, nudging his fingers through the blond’s basket with mild nosey interest. He then scowled, pulling out a bag of instant coffee with a pinched, disgusted two-fingered grasp. “Oh, hell no.”

“I wasn’t yelling at him, and even if I was, it’s none of your business,” Abe said, watching the guy drop the instant coffee on the shelf next to him. Blue eyes cut over to him, and then the guy sighed, reaching a hand up to comb his hair back. A glint of light, and Abe noticed a small cuff earring on the guy’s cartilage, a tiny little moon charm dangling from it. Probably some college guy trying to be cool, he figured, then.

“Hmm, not yet, no,” came the cryptic response. “All right, go on. I’ll make sure Mihashi gets his groceries, no thanks to you.”

The guy turned to go down the coffee aisle, and Abe saw what looked like a black circle tattoo at the base of the guy’s neck peeking from beneath the neckline of the graphic tee. Definitely some punk kid trying to look cool. Abe rolled his eyes, then walked up to get checked out so he could get away from the crazy Nishiura locals and plant his pretty little garden.

The drive back to his home was much more pleasant than the drive to town had been, as the rain turned into a slight drizzle by the time Abe hit the dirt road. He pulled up to his house and parked, then walked up to his front door with probably more groceries than he should have tried to carry in one trip. He hauled them all inside, kicking off his shoes at the door and dropping the heavy bags with a labored huff on his counter. He glanced out the window over his sink, peering at the tree line, but it was as devoid of any blond-haired-hazel-eyed stalkers as it had been since the one incident.

Abe put the groceries into their proper places in the kitchen, finishing off with a single box of baking soda into the fridge. He then took all the bags and tucked them into each other to recycle later before walking back out to his car to grab the first handful of plants, walking around his house through the iron gate to deposit them in the vague area where he wanted to plant them. Four trips later, he had all of his plants, the wood for his beans, and the wriggling tomato cage rolling around in the mud all out of his car and in the backyard. First things first, he made a little triangle stand out of the wood and tied them together at the top, positioning them over the dirt (mud) he’d mussed up to make soft the previous morning.

A glance at the little plastic stick in the bean pot and Abe buried it according to instructions, glaring through the falling sprinkle and figuring that would probably be sufficient watering, for now. He then planted the tomato plant next to the beans, grabbing the wire cage when he was through and peering down at it with a slight bit of apprehension. It took a few seconds of awkward manipulation of pulling the legs and pushing them into the dirt, but a minute later, Abe stepped away, looking at his crooked tomato cage with reluctant acceptance.

The other plants followed soon enough after, down in two neat little lines at the side of his fence where his uncle’s previous plot had seemed to be, though he just about tore up his second bell pepper plant when a voice cut through the pleasant silence of rain and squashing mud beneath his hands.

“Wow, those don’t look too good.” Abe jerked his head up just in time to see the freckled punk from the grocery store leaning on his cobblestone fence, a raincoat pulled up over his mussed dark brown hair and head propped up on his elbow as he stared disapprovingly at Abe’s garden. Abe felt a flare of annoyance in his gut, not only because damn it this was _his_ garden and he was working hard on it, but also because this jackass somehow figured out where he lived and now he had _two_ stalkers.

“What the hell do you want?” Abe asked, looking back down to his poor bell pepper plant and trying to right the little sprout from where his jerk at the punk’s voice had knocked it over a little. “I really don’t need _two_ idiots stalking me.”

“Don’t flatter yourself. I came to give Mihashi his groceries since you scared him off before he could buy them himself,” the punk drawled. “He’s way too scared of humans for his own good, though I can’t say I really blame him with a sour face like yours for a neighbor.”

Abe stilled, hands still knuckle-deep in the mud, and he peered up at the punk who was looking at his nails with mild disinterest. “What did you just say?” Abe asked, slowly, carefully, drawing the punk’s eyes down to his own, blue blinking once.

“Man, clean the shit out of your ears. Mihashi isn’t _stalking_ you. He lives in those woods right there. Five minute walk, as long as you don’t get lost.” The punk gestured to the woods with a flick of his head, but Abe stood, walking over after glancing at the woods, not quite sure if he was expecting golden eyes to be looking back at him again or what.

“That’s not what I meant and you know it,” Abe said, curling mud-riddled fingers into fists when the punk’s lips curled around a knowing grin. “Is this some kind of joke? I might have just moved here from the city, but I’m not an idiot, and - ”

“Yeah, _that’s_ a joke,” the punk interrupted smoothly, standing straight and reaching a hand up to twirl his bangs between two fingers. “You heard it from Shinooka, right? She’s usually the one who tells you, if I don’t run into you first on accident and mess stuff up.”

“What… the fuck are you talking about.”

An incredulous expression met his before falling into a flat grimace. “Man, really? You usually catch on a lot better than this… oh, maybe that’s a good thing? Maybe this is the right one?” The punk pulled his shirtsleeve down and looked down at a watch on his wrist, except Abe saw what looked like five hands instead of two, and instead of numbers, multi-colored circles were spinning in a slow ellipse around the center. “Hmm, it seems a little early, but I’m all fucked up anyway, so… Huh, nice.”

Abe was one breath away from stepping back to pull his cell phone out of his pocket to call the cops, except his hands were super muddy and this was a new phone and something was… odd, about the situation, in a way that was scary but _not_. Then, he thought about the punk’s words, about what Shinooka would have told him, and a single word weighed heavily on the tip of his tongue as he felt his eyes widen because it was _impossible,_ but -

“Okay, Abe, really, I know you’re supposed to figure it out on your own and stuff, but I’ve got a dinner date with Mizutani in like, an hour, and the _last_ time I cancelled on him four people lost their cabbages and _really_ I don’t want to have to explain that to Mihashi again, so if we could move this along a bit - ”

“No,” Abe cut in, raising a hand to silence the punk kid and taking a step back. “Nope. Assuming that this isn’t some kind of sick joke, which I’m not completely convinced it isn’t, I’ve seen enough of my brother’s anime to know _exactly_ where this is going and I’m not interested.”

“Aren’t you even moderately intrigued by how I suddenly knew your name?”

“It’s on the _mailbox_ , idiot.”

“Aw, fuck,” the punk sighed, leaning sourly on the wall. “That’s right. That ploy only ever works if I meet you _before_ you get home. God damn it, I’m getting all mixed up.” The punk sighed, looking at Abe long and hard, then down to his watch. “Well, I figured it was too early for the right time. Guess I’m just going to have to reset the timeline again.”

“Yeah, no. I saw that one with Shun too.”

“Hey, man, fuck you. Homura was cool.” The punk straightened, once again looking down at his watch and squinting through the rain. “They got the terminology all wrong, but hey. What do I know. Maybe witches really are meant to go bad. Sure seems to be headed that way now.” Abe opened his mouth to snap something back, but there was something in the punk’s tone, a flatness that was not out of the dry humor but something that was flat to the point of a blade and just as cutting. “Anyway, see ya, Abe. Make sure not to be too mean to Mihashi, okay? You _really_ don’t want to piss off Tajima right now.”

“Huh?” Abe smartly replied, but there was a soft click, and then in even less than a blink of an eye, the punk was gone, leaving behind only the haunting sensation that he’d never been there in the first place. Abe stared in absolute silence, then took a single step forward, then another, until he could rest his hands on his stone wall and peer over the side. No trap door. He reached his hand out, but no mirror met his swiping arm through the air. He lowered his arm to his side, pressing the back of his hand to his mouth as the thought came again, that the punk kid - that his friend, the blond Abe had seen earlier, that Mihashi guy, they were… they were really…

“No way,” Abe muttered, except then he realized that he was walking all over his garden plot. He stepped back, exhaling softly when he hadn’t stepped on any of his plants. They did look a lot droopier than they did in the pictures he’d seen on the internet, he supposed, crouching down and lifting one sad, wilted leave with a finger as he thought. Shinooka’s words, that the witches were the ones to protect the balance of nature. The endless rain that was so unnatural, the punk’s complaints about being all messed up - it was impossible, _impossible_ , but something in his gut was disquieted. Something that didn’t feel like destiny, because destiny was about as bullshit as witches were, but maybe something kinda close, like maybe this had happened before.

Abe’s eyes looked over to the woods next to his yard, over the stone wall past the little iron gate at the back. He stood, walking over to the gate and resting his hand on it, fingers resting on the catch as he peered through the tree line, into darkness and foliage so thick it felt wild and - and _magical_ , the word came, and with tingling fingers, Abe released the catch on his gate and let the iron gate swing open. It did not do so noiselessly, a gentle creak filling the silence between the rain and his thundering heart. He looked over his shoulder, towards his garden, where he’d stood not five minutes ago, telling the punk boldly that he wouldn’t get involved. But then he saw his wilting plants, to the house his uncle had left, and he thought about the lost look on the punk’s face that was almost always carefully hidden, and the panicked blond that had been so afraid he’d abandoned food to run away.

Abe turned back to the forest, then started walking.

 

 


	2. a bird in his hair

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you all for the suuuuper awesome comments and feedback across the various social media sites omg(!!!!!) glad to know i'm not the only one who likes a little bit of a break from the apocalypse ahahahahha 
> 
> someone get abe takaya a farmer's almanac.

The forest around him was about as dense as he’d expected, sunlight unable to pierce through the tops of the trees except in a few tiny places. Green plants filled the spaces between the trees, the mulch thick and dark beneath his boots. Even the rain wasn’t coming down except for but a few drops, though when Abe peered up at the sky a single raindrop hit him almost in his eye and he stomped angrily a few more steps.

Then, a sudden thought. He turned to look over his shoulder, and he realized he couldn’t see his house anymore.

It felt dangerous in the next heartbeat, walking into woods just because a weird guy said that another weird guy lived in them, even if they were supposedly witches and not just a cult of _weird guys_. (Maybe _especially_ because they were supposedly witches? What was worse - cult of weird guys or cult of - ?) He turned back around, racking his brain for whether or not he had a ball of string or something in a kitchen drawer he could tie to his fence so he didn’t get lost. Or maybe a compass would work? He should at _least_ turn the light on in his garden so he could follow that back home. Go wash his hands really quickly so he could call his mom and tell her to call a search party if he didn’t call back in - yeah, okay, no, that was not gonna happen.

Abe continued to spin the mental wheels regarding other possible options for how he could orient himself while exploring the forest, coming up with a few good picks when something felt off, a kind of itchy discomfort between his shoulder blades. He looked up, then stopped walking, mouth going dry. Shouldn’t he - he should have _definitely_ come out of the woods by now. He looked around for anything, _anything_ that looked familiar, then down to the ground for his footsteps. The ground was springy, it should have captured them at least a little bit -

But there, there were markings where he’d stepped on some little ferns before. He exhaled in relief, then kept his eyes focused on the ground as he followed his path back to his home. He’d probably just been lost in thought on the way into the woods and gone further than he’d thought, Abe decided, focusing intently on tracking his way. He was lucky the rain had caused the ground to be so accepting of his footsteps. He had his phone in his pocket, yes, but there was no telling if he’d get service in this dense a forest. It wasn’t that great in his house, even, and he’d even thought about getting a landline put in just for that reason.

Abe stopped again when another long period of time passed and he was still not out of the forest. He’d definitely been following his footsteps, unquestioningly. There had not been any deviations, and he hadn’t missed any signs. But this tree was definitely the same tree he’d passed once before, the red-leafed bush next to it in the same position. He looked up to the sky, and sure enough, another revengeful drop of rain hit him in the face.

“Shit… _shit…_ ” Abe crouched down, lifting his hands to cup them over his nose and mouth when he felt his breathing start to pick up. No, absolutely not. He would _not_ start hyperventilating just because he was lost. He still had his phone. He took it out of his pocket, but when he saw the little red x next to the bar sign, he pressed the back of his hand to his forehead as he tried to steady his breath again. “Shit. Shit!”

He’d been walking in circles. There was no questioning that, but _how_ he’d been walking in circles when he’d only ever walked in a straight path, how he could be _so lost_ when he’d only taken just a few steps into the forest - ?! He looked all around him, the rain filling the air with the sounds of each leafy drum it hit on its way down to the earth, and Abe swallowed, goosebumps rising on his arms at the way it was so loud and yet so absolutely quiet all around him.

And then, there was a light touch to his shoulder. He jerked away with a noise of terror and another noise matched his. A tumble of blurry motion, and when Abe managed to crawl back away from whatever it was that touched him, he looked and saw -

“Y-You!” he said, eyes wide at the hazel-eyed blond looking at Abe like he’d tried to gnaw his arm off. There was more on the tip of his tongue, but he didn’t have enough air in his lungs to make any of it come out.

“I’m s-sorry, I didn’t mean to…! I was just…!” the blond said, fingers reaching up to curl into his scarf and hold it defensively on his pale face while his round eyes stared warily at Abe. Abe, who remembered the punk’s words that Mihashi lived in these woods, Abe who was very lost and needed help getting _out_ of the woods.

“Wait, you’re… Mihashi, right?” Abe asked, breathless, and the blond squeaked out a noise, gaping at Abe in surprise.

“How did you - ? I mean, yes, I’m…” The blond - Mihashi - twirled his fingers in the frills of his scarf, letting them come away from his mouth where he’d pressed them in his anxiety.

“The punk guy told me. Your friend? With the blue eyes and freckles? Uh, scars?” Mihashi tilted his head in confusion, then his mouth opened into a wide diamond shape as he made a noise of recognition.

“Oh, Izumi-kun! He’s… not…! He’s a nice person, not…” Mihashi defended, though he did so cautiously, eyes locked onto Abe like he was waiting for an attack to strike out. Granted, Abe thought guiltily, the last time they’d met, Abe might have actually punched him. “He, um, he’s your friend, too?”

“Not really, no,” Abe said. “He told me about you, then came to my garden and insulted it before disappearing.”

“He disappeared?” Mihashi asked, shoulders suddenly falling in concert with his gaze, a perfect picture of a dejected sadness. “So, then, this isn’t the one, either…”

“What the hell is going on?” Abe asked, and Mihashi looked up at him again, blinking once, then twice, and then he looked over Abe’s shoulder. Abe did as well when Mihashi’s gaze lingered longer than a moment or two, but there was nothing behind him but the forest as far as he could see.

“You should… Abe-kun should come have some tea. And I’ll explain, just in case, just in case Izumi-kun is wrong,” Mihashi said, then looking to Abe with a positively horrified expression. “N-Not that I think that, or - or!”

“Yeah, okay, whatever. Also, can you show me how to get out of here? I keep walking in circles.”

A relieved huff was probably the last reaction to that sentence he’d expected, but it was definitely what he got. “Oh, good. At least something’s still working right,” Mihashi mumbled. He stood off the ground, brushing off his trousers, and Abe saw that he was still wearing that knitted sweater with the little black and white bird on the front. His green jacket was gone, though. “Um, please, come in…”

“Come where?” Abe asked as he also stood, looking around for a house and not finding one. Mihashi took a few steps down a little bank, and Abe followed, watching as a little creek came into view. Mihashi hopped over it, and Abe did the same, looking over his shoulder and wondering how he’d never realized the creek was there with how long he’d been in the forest.

When he turned back to look at Mihashi, he suddenly saw a cute little cottage-like thing tucked into some trees - or was it _part_ of the trees? He couldn’t really see where the home started and the trees stopped, and the entire area was filled with all kinds of flowers that looked like they probably would be pretty if they weren’t quite so wilted-looking. He wasn’t alone in his looking, as Mihashi glanced down at them then sighed heavily.

The inside of the cottage smelled of herbs and pretty flowers, and Abe looked around to see what looked like a little kitchen area, a small table, and a single bed. Out back, there was a little outhouse, or something like it, as built into a tree as the home was. Dried plants of all different kinds hung from the ceiling, and pretty stones and glass beads filtered the light and broke it into hundreds of colors where it touched the floor. It was breathtakingly beautiful, colors and smells all around, dancing in the low light like stars.

Mihashi busied himself with putting a teapot over the fire that was burning in the small fireplace Abe just noticed, taking two mismatched tea cups and putting them on the counter. The blond looked at him, then the teacups, then blushed bright red. “I don’t… have many… uh… usually it’s only Tajima-kun, or Sakaeguchi-kun, so…”

“It’s fine,” Abe said, sitting down at the table while Mihashi sat across from him. “So, you’re a witch, then?”

Mihashi nodded jerkily, fingers coiling together on the table as he shifted anxiously. “Y-yeah, um… Well, it’s… Things aren’t really working too well, now, and… Well…” Mihashi took in a deep breath after meeting Abe’s eyes for a single breath, looking down morosely down at the table. “Something’s… wrong, with us, that is. Or, or with our magic, or… I don’t really understand it when they talk about it, but - ”

“How many are there?” Abe asked, and Mihashi looked up, his expression spectacularly bird-like as he thought. He pulled up his fingers and counted off as he mumbled names.

“Nine? …Yeah, nine, nine of us. We all have a piece of the nature that we’re supposed to protect, but…” Abe watched as Mihashi’s shoulders hunched up to his reddening ears, his face scrunching up as tears collected in his eyes. “B-But, we’re all messed up, and it’s all _my_ fault, a-and, and everyone _hates_ me, and - !” Mihashi started sobbing, smothering the noises in the palms of his hands as he shrank into as tiny a shape as he could in his chair. Abe pinched at the bridge of his nose against the oncoming headache.

“Okay, first, stop crying. Second, the water’s ready. We’ll get to third when you’re done.” Mihashi looked up and sniffed away the snot that had started to collect with his wailing, looking over his shoulder to the little fireplace where, indeed, the kettle was steaming and starting to make a faint whistling noise.

“O-oh, right,” Mihashi said, pushing away from the table to get the kettle. He pulled it off the fire, then put it on the sink as he opened a little cabinet that was sitting on the countertop. It looked like his mother’s jewelry box, Abe thought, though instead of anything shiny, Mihashi plucked out a pinch of what looked like dried herbs of some sort, putting them into one of the tea cups. A second pinch in a different drawer, and a third pinch out of yet another drawer, one last one, and Mihashi then poured the hot water over the leaves and brought the cup over to Abe. It smelled wonderful, the different leaves swirling and blooming in the cup to stain it a light brown.

“What’s in this?” Abe asked as Mihashi went to go over and make his own cup - a different blend, Abe noticed, as there were more ingredients from different drawers. He saw Mihashi’s spine stiffen a bit, and for a second, Abe considered definitely _not_ drinking it.

“It’s, ah, uh, a c-calming tea, to… um… so you don’t yell,” Mihashi mumbled, turning bright pink and plopping down rigidly in the seat across from Abe, who gaped at him before clamming his mouth shut. He hadn’t ever _yelled_ , though he suppose this idiot might have thought he was yelling in the grocery store. “It’s, it’s also good since you’ve probably been working in your garden all day, so…”

“Oh, yeah,” Abe acknowledged, looking down at the leaves and grasping the cup. A tiny hand snatched out at his wrist before he could touch it, however, and Abe stared down at the long, pale fingers wrapped tightly around his hand, keeping him absolutely still. The grip was much, _much_ stronger than he’d thought with a scrawny little thing like Mihashi on the other end of it, but before he could do much more than blink, the fingers released him.

“It’s not ready yet. Two more minutes.”

Abe blinked down at the tea, which was about the color it usually was when he started to drink stuff like this. He also carefully ignored the fact that his hands, while no longer muddy, were absolutely filthy and would probably smudge all over Mihashi’s cup. “Are you sure? It looks done to me.”

“The magic needs time,” Mihashi said, visibly deflating. “Usually, you’d be right, but… right now, it takes longer, because it’s not as strong.”

Abe nodded quickly in case letting Mihashi continue had him sobbing again. “Yeah, right, okay.” Mihashi nodded as well, and then an awkward silence dropped over the table between them, Mihashi staring down at his cup of tea while Abe stared at _him_ , slightly tapping one finger on the wood. “So,” Abe started, swallowing past the mild irritation when the word caused Mihashi to jump a bit. “I heard from someone that your job is to keep nature in balance, but you and the other guy - Izumi? - said that something’s wrong?”

Mihashi nodded slowly, then picked up his cup of tea for a delicate sip. Abe took that as a cue to be able to do the same, and he reached out cautiously for his in case he was wrong and Mihashi snatched at him again. The touch never came, and Abe lifted the cup to his lips for a single sip. There was some kind of minty flavor to the tea, and something just a little sweet over the bitterness of the herbal earthy flavor, a full and rounded chord of flavor that delighted his tongue and, just as Mihashi had hoped, had his muscles feeling just a little looser in his body. He wondered if that was the magic, or if it was just because of drinking warm tea when he’d been just a little chilly from the rain without having noticed.

“Y-yeah, that’s… That’s right, but… the balance got too messed up, I think, and I’m not strong enough to fix it back.” Mihashi looked down into his cup of tea miserably, leaving Abe to take another sip of tea while he pondered.

“So, are you the leader, or something?” he asked, and Mihashi looked up with a snap, flushing and shaking his head.

“N-No, there’s no… um, well, not really, no, but…” Mihashi plucked at the scarf around his neck. “My job is the plants themselves, so even if everyone else was fine, if I messed up, they still wouldn’t grow, so…”

“But everyone else _isn’t_ fine,” Abe said, and Mihashi shook his head slowly.

“Tajima-kun… Tajima-kun isn’t in his house. He left a note saying that Hanai-kun was missing, and he was going to go find him. And, and Sakaeguchi-kun’s mother just… He just lost her, so he’s not really… He’s not himself… And…” Mihashi plucked more intently at his scarf. “The others I don’t really know where they live, except Izumi-kun and Nishihiro-kun, but Izumi-kun told me that if everyone else is so messed up then it messes _him_ up, so…” Mihashi sighed out softly, getting the same dejected look he’d gotten earlier.

“Sounds like a mess,” Abe said over the rim of his cup, and Mihashi nodded glumly, sipping at his own tea and looking up to Abe through his lashes.

“Izumi-kun said, though… that he was going to find someone who could help,” Mihashi said. “That’s why… When I saw you in the woods and you mentioned him, I thought…”

Abe smothered his face in his hands, groaning softly at the fact that damn it, he’d been _right_. Sure enough, he was about to get pulled into some crazy bizarre fantasy anime-type bullshit where he was the one normal person to save the world. He then looked to Mihashi through his fingers. “Wait, so… You’re in charge of the plants themselves, and Izumi is… time?”

“Yeah!” Mihashi chirped. “Izumi-kun is the moon witch, in charge of the time for plants to grow. That’s how he can move through, uh…” Mihashi squinted at the table, visibly fretting. “Um… Well, I don’t really… understand how it works… But that’s okay, because he does! I think…” Mihashi looked up to Abe again, holding his cup up to his face to enjoy the steam and peering at him through it. “So, are you…?”

Abe thought back to the conversation he’d had with Izumi over his little garden wall, and then sighed heavily. “I guess it seems that way,” he said, propping his head up on his hand. “Though I really have no idea what you even need, which makes it really hard to do anything. Plus that punk jumped ship, so we’re probably already screwed.”

Mihashi shook his head. “You can probably find Izumi-kun at the observatory on the hill, but I don’t think we can do anything for him right now… He said we have to fix the others, first.”

Abe swirled his tea in his cup, watching the leaves dance beneath the water. “How do I fix you?” He waited, and when he didn’t get an answer, he looked up, spotting a subdued but still miserable look on Mihashi’s face.

“I… don’t know what’s wrong with me, so…” Mihashi looked down at his hands, curling his fingers into fists and then relaxing them again. “I was fine for a while, even when everyone else wasn’t, but… now I can barely even feel the magic in the trees here.”

Abe put down his cup, a sudden flash of gold in his mind. “Is that what you were doing in the rain that one night? Looking for the magic in the trees?”

“Y-Yes, I’m… I’m really sorry I… I didn’t mean to scare you…”

“You didn’t _scare_ me, you pissed me off!” Abe snapped, and Mihashi jumped, eyeing Abe’s cup of tea warily. With a huff, Abe took the cup and tossed back the last few sips like a white-hot shot, the tea burning his throat as he snapped the cup back down to the table. “There, I drank your relaxation tea. Happy?”

Mihashi made a bizarre facial expression while he wiggled in his seat. “Y-Yeah,” he said goofily, but before Abe could think too much on it, there was a sudden chirping noise that was just different enough from a sound Mihashi would make that he knew it wasn’t the blond. He looked around for the source of the noise, but then he heard a bubbling giggle and when he looked down to Mihashi, there was a little chickadee now sitting in his hair.

“What the - ?!”

“He’s my familiar,” Mihashi said, cupping his hands in front of him. The little chickadee hopped down to sit on Mihashi’s palms, which Mihashi then extended for Abe to get a better look.

Abe peered at the bird, which opened its mouth and made a cute little _pii pii_  chirp. “He’s the one on your sweater,” Abe recognized, watching as the bird flew back up to the roof of the house where he appeared to have a little next built in the rafters.

“Yeah,” Mihashi said, plucking at his sweater gently. “Sakaeguchi-kun made this for me. He’s really good at knitting clothes, since he’s the sun witch. Or, uh, maybe in spite of being the sun witch. Um. I’m not really sure.” Mihashi mumbled the last bit, wobbling about, and Abe suddenly wished he had more of the calming tea.

“Well, I guess we should talk about what’s wrong with all you witches so we can fix it,” Abe said, but Mihashi shook his head. “Why not?”

“It’s getting late, and the forest… it isn’t good for humans after dark,” he said, looking out the window. “We could have Oki-kun make you a charm or something to protect your travels, probably, but I haven’t seen him in a while, so…”

“Yeah, okay, I get it. You’re gonna have to lead me back, remember?” Abe said, and Mihashi made that diamond-mouth gaping expression again.

“O-Oh, right, the wards are still - they keep people from - yeah, okay, let’s go.” Mihashi stood from the table, and Abe watched as his little chickadee familiar swooped down from the rafters to settle in Mihashi’s hair with a wiggle. Abe followed behind, watching as Mihashi shut his door behind them then started walking.

They passed over the creek, then down the little hill, and past the tree with the red leafy bush next to it, and then, it was just a few more minutes of walking before the sound of the rain got louder, and then Abe saw his house, the little gate still open from where he’d left it. He exhaled in relief, about to walk through the gate when Mihashi did just that first, walking over to the little garden Abe had planted that day. Abe watched as Mihashi kneeled in front of his plants, reaching out with a tender touch to caress the plants, a lost look on his face.

“There’s no magic here,” he murmured, standing straight and looking up at the sky. “There’s too much everywhere else… It’s all wrong.” He then looked to Abe, and in the navy of the almost-night, for a split second, Abe saw not hazel, but gold. But Mihashi blinked once, and then it was gone, just like Mihashi had that one night, and just like Izumi had. “We’ve got to do something, Abe-kun.”

Abe sighed reluctantly, taking his hand and running it through his hair. “Yeah, okay. I’ll help you out.” In front of him, Mihashi bloomed with joy, shooting Abe a smile so bright it just about blinded him to look at it.

“You’re the best, Abe-kun!” Mihashi said, the chickadee on his head chirping _pii! pii pii!_  in loud agreement. Abe felt his cheeks burn hot and hoped whatever redness wasn’t visible in the dim light of dusk.

“So… we should probably start with the rain, right? That seems to be the biggest problem right now. Surely one of you witches is in charge of that.”

Mihashi nodded, looking up at the sky. “Yeah… That’s Nishihiro-kun. He lives in the forest too, down the creek by the river. So, I’ll have to go with you, or else you’ll get lost again.”

Abe remembered his nigh-panic attack earlier and huffed out in agreement. Yeah, he was definitely _not_ going back out into those woods without Mihashi there to meet him. Not when there was apparently some kind of magical mumbo jumbo designed to keep him as lost as possible. “Yeah, sounds good. Want to meet tomorrow morning?”

Mihashi nodded, then clapped his hands together in delight. “I’ll make a picnic! It’ll be fun!”

“…This isn’t a field trip, Mihashi,” Abe said, but Mihashi was either ignoring him or didn’t hear over the loud chirping of his bird. Rolling his eyes, Abe decided he should probably just be grateful he wouldn’t have to think about tomorrow’s lunch or use his own groceries for it. “Okay. I’ll meet you there by the gate tomorrow morning.”

“Right. Good night, Abe-kun,” Mihashi said, and with a timid wave, Mihashi stepped through said gate and stepped into the tree line just past it. Abe watched him for as long as he could, but in seconds, both the blond and his chirpy little familiar were as invisible as if they didn’t exist.

Abe turned back to his house, walking through the back door into the kitchen. He took off his shoes, turning around and locking his door behind him. He then started to head out of the kitchen to take a shower before grabbing some food to eat, but the moment he got to the doorway he started when there was someone sitting in his living room.

“Holy shit,” he hissed out, hand reaching out to clutch at the door frame when he recognized that it was none other than the local punk ass brat witch, Izumi Kousuke. With a loud crunch, Izumi sank a bite into a half-eaten apple, ignoring Abe for a few more seconds before looking up to him. “What the _hell_ are you - how did you - ?!”

“Sure took you long enough,” Izumi drawled after swallowing. He then raised a hand where he had a small keyring twirling around his pointer finger, a silver key flashing in the light on it. “You’re going to give me a key in a couple days. When I go back in time, I lose consumable items but important things don’t go away.”

Another pop culture reference, Abe guessed, watching as Izumi caught the key and then lowered his arm back down. “So, good talk with Mihashi, then?” Izumi asked, reclining back on the couch and propping up his sock-covered feet on the arm closest to Abe. Abe scoffed.

“He’s incomprehensible.”

“Yeah, you get used to that.”

Abe reached a hand up to rub at his face, grimacing at the stubble on his jaw and the fact that he felt like he’d spent all day in the garden and rain and still hadn’t showered from it. “So, you decided against disappearing into a parallel time, then? Whatever happened to pulling the Homura?”

“Oh, I tried,” Izumi said, taking a bite of his apple and then looking at it thoughtfully. “I definitely tried, but either my magic has now gotten so fucked up I can’t do that anymore and we’re completely fucked, or this is the correct timeline for you to fix shit and we’re only marginally fucked.”

Abe turned back into the kitchen and grabbed an apple of his own, talking back into the living room. He shoved Izumi’s feet off his couch, ignoring the nasty look Izumi shot him before propping his feet up on Abe’s coffee table instead. “So, things are pretty bad, huh?” Abe asked, and Izumi’s response was a bark of humorless laughter.

“Man, they’re so fucked up we didn’t even realize it was so bad until it was too late to do anything about it,” he said, smiling wryly at the wall. “Tajima’s out looking for Hanai, Sakaeguchi’s upset because his mom died, no one’s seen Oki in days, which has Nishihiro all in a slump, and since that’s all messed up, Mizutani can’t do his job, which means Mihashi can’t do his, and with everyone else so out of whack, my magic is so useless it’s starting to fray just like everyone else’s.” Izumi looked down at his fingers, rubbing his thumb on the pad of his fingers. “It would have been really bad if you hadn’t agreed to help, Abe. We really need you.”

“Yeah, well, I don’t really get why it needs to be me,” Abe grunted, and Izumi shrugged, taking a bite and chewing at the same time Abe did the same.

“I don’t know. It wasn’t you, not at first, but as soon as you showed up - ” Izumi stopped himself with a clamped jaw, tongue darting out over his lips and a quick huff of air before he continued. “Look, All I do know is that every timeline I’ve ever been in with you there, it’s gotten closer than when you weren’t. I think… I think it has something to do with you and Mihashi, to be honest,” Izumi said, voice dropping a bit at the last bit. “I don’t wanna spoil the ending for you, especially when this timeline’s already way different, but… you two have something really… really cool going on.”

“Something ‘cool’?” Abe repeated, feeling his face contort into disbelief. “There’s no way I’d ever have anything beyond ‘reluctant neighbor’ status with that idiot.”

“Hmm,” Izumi hummed, not responding in a negative or positive manner. “Well, in any case, it’s not that you’re special, I don’t think. In fact, it might be _because_ you’re not special. Hell if I know.” Izumi took the last bite out of his apple, holding the core by the stem in front of him and watching it swing gently. He chewed, then swallowed. “Who’re you gonna go see tomorrow?”

“Some guy named Nishihiro,” Abe answered, and Izumi exhaled in relief.

“Oh, thank God. Every time you go for Oki first, you always died in really bizarre ways. I was hoping I didn’t have to convince you not to do that again. Man, get this, one time, you - ”

“Yeah, no,” Abe interrupted, chewing loudly on his apple to distract himself from whatever it was Izumi was about to say. He _really_ didn’t want to think about anything like that. “How about you? What’s your problem? You’re here, so I might as well start with you, right?”

“Eh, it wouldn’t do you any good,” Izumi said with a one-shouldered shrug. “My problem is - well, first off, if you could convince Mizutani to stop being such an idiot, that would be awesome. But barring that, there’s not really anything you can do. Contrary to the saying, time doesn’t heal jack shit. Time just passes. If something’s broken and you just wait, it’s not going to get fixed.”

“So you’re last, then?” Abe asked, and Izumi gave him a cryptic smile.

“Hmm, no, not last. There’s one thing that’s more important than time, but you’ll figure it out.” Izumi’s smile fell, and a deadpan look replaced it. “Well. Probably. Hopefully.”

Abe felt the grimace on his face. “I don’t suppose you could give me any actual pointers or anything instead of being vague and intentionally annoying? And, you know. Tell me how to get rid of everyone’s problems, mister time travel.”

“At this point I think it’s easier for me to tell you what _not_ to do, like, y’know. Don’t go see Oki first. Don’t turn left when you get to the path on the east side of town until after your blueberries come in. Oh, also, don’t wear those new boots of yours tomorrow. Trust me, you don’t wanna know.”

Abe thought about the brand new hiking books he’d already mentally planned on wearing. “Well, shit,” he said, taking a bite, and then Izumi’s hand landed heavily on his shoulder.

“You’ll thank me, someday. Well, actually, you probably won’t, but that’s okay, because I know the thank you is there in your heart.” A sudden tapping noise filled the room, and Abe looked at the window to see a raven, clicking its beak on Abe’s living room window. Right as he about choked on his apple, Izumi stood from his couch. “Ah, that’s my cue to go. Oh, in case Mihashi didn’t tell you, don’t go into the woods at night. It’s dangerous for you right now.”

Abe cleared his throat until he could finally breathe again, wiping the tears out of his eyes. “Yeah, he mentioned it,” he croaked, then looked over to the window where the raven was waiting patiently and staring at Izumi. “That your familiar?”

“Yeah,” Izumi responded. “He’s really good, though he’s such a pushover for Mizutani’s snake. Gotta teach him to put that little shit where it belongs.”

“So you don’t all have birds?” Abe asked, following Izumi over to where he was heading to the front door where his shoes waited.

“Nah, only me and Mihashi have birds. Mizutani’s got a snake, Tajima’s got a labrador, and Hanai has a dachshund, Sakaeguchi’s got that super fluffy cat, and… well, you’ll meet all of them eventually. It’s pointless to list them all out now when you don’t even know who I’m talking about.” Izumi tapped his toes on the floor as he finished putting his shoes on, then opened the front door. His raven immediately flew over to rest on his shoulder, and Izumi turned to look at Abe one last time. “All right, I’m heading out. Take care of Nishihiro, tomorrow. He’s a really good guy and it sucks to see him bummed out like this.”

Abe raised his hand both in acknowledgement and farewell, and then with a zip of his raincoat, Izumi disappeared back into the light rain, his raven fluffing in irritation at the rain for the few seconds they were visible before they were gone into the inky evening.

Abe shut the door, locking it and turning to look into his home. He sighed out, then took the last bite of his apple, tossing it into the garbage can in his kitchen before he started towards his bedroom. He stripped while he walked down the hall, tossing his dirty clothes into the basket just inside his bathroom. He sat down on the wooden stool in front of his shower, turning on the water and relishing the warmth running over him. He grabbed the soap and a clean washcloth, then started scrubbing at the dried mud and sweat clinging to his skin, watching as the filthy water went down the drain but mind still in the magical forest behind his house.

He wondered, absently, if his uncle had known about the witches living behind him. Then, if Mihashi was some kind of special creature - he and Izumi both used the word ‘human’ as an other term, as if they themselves weren’t, which kind of went against what he’d always heard in fairy tales about witches (but he kind of hadn’t really studied fairy tales for their scientific accuracy, now had he?). He turned on the hot water for his bath once his hands weren’t filthy, then lathered up his hair with shampoo. He washed it off, and once he was clean and his bath was full, he turned off the water, getting in.

He hissed at the heat touching his chilled toes, then sank in slowly, exhaling out through the steam and feeling the muscles in his body relax against the heat. It kind of reminded him of the strange sensation that had taken him after that first sip of Mihashi’s tea, he thought, opening his eyes and staring at the ceiling. Not hot like the bath, but with the same degree of puddle-feeling in his muscles, like he could have sat there for hours and been completely content.

“Must be nice to be a witch,” Abe mumbled to himself, sinking lower into the bath until his mouth was beneath the surface of the water. Izumi could, apparently, time travel whenever he wanted, and Mihashi seemed to be able to do some pretty nifty stuff with his teas. He thought about this Nishihiro, who could control the rain - well, hopefully, he could control the rain - and wondered if there was something cool he could do with his magic too. Plus this Tajima person, and this Sakaeguchi who could make cool clothes…

Abe felt dizzy, and not sure whether it was from the long day and realization that not only was magic real it was quite close or whether it was from the hot bath, he drained the wooden tub and climbed out, drying his pink body off before padding into his bedroom. Then, suddenly remembering that Mihashi lived right behind him and he had  a wall full of windows, he wrapped his towel around his waist, staring out suspiciously into the woods. Well, that was kinda stupid, he thought. It was not only unlikely that Mihashi could see through the rain into his bedroom, it was even more unlikely the blond would actually _look_. But still, he kept the towel around his waist until he had a pair of boxers secured on his person.

He collapsed into his bed, tucking himself beneath the sheet and rolling over to stare out the windows to the trees. Another witch to meet the next day, and hopefully he’d be able to fix it quickly to stop this stupid rain. He thought about the perplexed expression the weatherman had, Shinooka’s own vaguely exasperated tone talking about it, his own frustration with moving around all the time and knowing that if he went outside he’d get soaking wet, and - and poor Mihashi, out there in the forest, in that little tree hut that didn’t have any insulation or heating, on that single bed with the quilt. The rain cut the temperature down a lot, and Abe squeezed his eyes shut at the image of the blond shivering on his bed, his little chickadee chirping and sitting on Mihashi’s head to warm him up.

No, that was stupid, he decided, rolling over and putting his back to the window. Mihashi was a witch. If he was cold, he could make one of those teas that would warm him up in no time. Plus he had that fireplace that, while inefficient, would definitely keep him warm enough. (But he was having a tough time getting the magic out of the herbs for his tea, and what if he’d used the last of it on Abe that afternoon) - no, no, no. Mihashi was _fine_ , this was _stupid_ , and he was going to go to sleep _right now_ because otherwise, he’d be hiking tomorrow with the idiot blond witch (who was _just fine_ ) and his stupid chirpy little familiar while exhausted.

And so Abe decided, exhaling out into the room and re-fluffing his pillow. He curled into the warmth beneath his blanket, closed his eyes, and proceeded not to fall asleep for another hour.

 

 


	3. break of the rainbow

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [hardcore intense guitar solo] nope i haven't forgotten about this fic i promise, yeehaw, etc. etc. you may want to go back and reread the last two chapters (a) because it's been a year, whoops and (b) i have changed a few things to make the Plans™ i have work in future chapters.
> 
> oh man, and have i got _plans_ for this bad boy now. :))

 

In a horrific combination of going to bed at an ungodly hour the previous evening (morning…?) and the dreary torrents still plaguing Nishiura, Abe woke the next day slowly and feeling distinctly unrested.

He lied there for a few minutes before rolling onto his back to stare blearily at the ceiling above his bed. Above him, thousands of thick drops stubbornly pelted his roof. His ears roared with the thundering proof of _another_ soggy day threatening to do _another_ twenty four hours of washing away his baby plants and temping him to remain lethargic in bed. This rain was getting really, _really_ old.

And then, his mind woke just a little more, and he remembered.

He was going to _do_ something about it today.

Abe sat up with a long breath of morning air. His sheets rucked around his hips and he dropped his feet over to the floor, rubbing at his face and feeling the stubble scrape his palm uncomfortably. He stood, padded into the bathroom, and walked through his morning routine with his mind half on the razor in his hand so he didn’t maim himself and half on the forest, wondering if Mihashi was doing the same thing he was doing right now, or if witches just didn’t grow beards, or if there was some kind of magic that would whisk it all away.

(He then wondered if maybe Mihashi _did_ usually magic his beard away, but couldn’t now, and the mental image of the blond staring helplessly at himself in the mirror while holding a razor like a preteen attempting his first solo shave proved too much for Abe. He snorted his laughter into his sink and let the rest pelt out, laughing until he had to reapply shaving cream and his diaphragm ached with each breath.)

Abe got a few nicks from his razor as a result of the occasional giggle that would huff out, but otherwise he finished up in the bathroom unharmed. He slipped his feet into a pair of indoor slippers and shuffled tiredly across his house. The dark wood floors filled the empty spaces between the walls with each drag of a sole against them, joined by a loud yawn he couldn’t swallow down. Reaching his arms high above his head as he passed from the hall into the great room, spine cracking with each pull towards the ceiling, finally, _finally_ Abe was ready to join the world for the morning.

A Japanese-style breakfast made its way down his gullet while he waited for the coffee to brew, and then two cups of that got packed away as well. He walked over to the sink to put his plate and cup in it, maybe wash it but probably just leave it there with some water in it, but -

“ _Jesus - !”_ he yelped when he glanced up through the window and saw a pair of hazel eyes peeking just at the bottom of the window. The plate and cup crashed into the sink, loud but not breaking, and one of Abe’s hands clutched the edge while the other gripped at his thundering heart. “ _Mihashi!_ ”

“I’m sorry!” Mihashi’s muffled response came, having disappeared below the window as if that would rectify the situation. Abe stared, body tense as the adrenaline slowly seeped out of his blood stream. After a moment, he breathed out, fingers tightening painfully on the side of the sink as he hissed out an annoyed breath. Fucking _Mihashi._

As if summoned, the top of Mihashi’s head slowly peeked back over the window, hands covering his face save for the small sliver where his fingers had parted to show one eye. Abe rolled his eyes, looking to see Mihashi’s chickadee familiar plop contentedly on the top of his head. It was almost too cute to be annoying, though Mihashi certainly seemed to be giving it a sporting go.

“Give me a second and I’ll be ready to go,” Abe said, and Mihashi nodded excitedly before skipping off into the yard, feet barely missing Abe’s plot of pitiful plants and - oh god, he really had made a picnic lunch for them, Abe saw, huge basket and checkered blanket - the whole shebang. He barely resisted the urge to smack his palm to his face. Mihashi really was too much.

Abe walked into the mud room and put his shoes on after kicking off his inside slippers, tying the laces on the older shoes with Izumi’s warning lingering in the back of his head. It seemed silly, really, to take Izumi’s word that somehow wearing new boots would cause him to die. But then again, this whole thing seemed silly - time-traveling, plant-controlling, weather-wrecking witches and all.

And so, pausing just inside the doorway to pull on his raincoat, Abe walked out into the muddy excuse of a garden to meet with Mihashi where the moron was currently standing in the rain with his familiar around one of Abe’s more pitiful tomato cages.

“There’s a trick to it,” Mihashi said when Abe walked up, barely audible over the rain hitting the plastic around Abe’s head. “You gotta - wrestle - both feet - yeah?”

“...No?” Abe responded, baffled by the bizarre gestures Mihashi was making with his arms. Mihashi frowned a bit, and the chickadee on his head gurgled out a _dee dee dee_ that seemed as petulant as its witch’s expression. He had to fight to keep a straight face, as apparently, tomato cage physics were serious business to a plant witch. “Why don’t you show me?”

Abe expected Mihashi to frown even more, or maybe make a sheepish expression - at the very least, reach out and grapple with the tomato cage, maybe succeed with with ease or maybe even fail pathetically and give Abe an excuse to get that laugh out. He didn’t get any of those things.

“I can’t,” Mihashi said, face suddenly nervous and tilting slightly to the side. Startled by the answer he got that was so different from what he’d expected, Abe stood still, shocked.

“Why not?” he demanded, wondering if maybe Mihashi meant he knew _how_ but couldn’t do it himself, or -

“I can’t touch it,” Mihashi said, more firmly, fingers curling together and worrying the hem of his sweater even as he kept Abe’s gaze and held it. “That is, I’m not allowed to - I _can’t_.”

“Not _allowed_ to?” Abe repeated, baffled. “Says _who?”_

“Hmmm,” Mihashi hummed, looking off into the woods. Somehow, he looked to be ten thousand years old in the space of a second, and Abe remembered, for some reason, the night he’d first seen Mihashi - golden eyes glinting in the pitch-black night. It was weird, imagining it, and yet it also seemed - seemed natural, imagining Mihashi standing before him, magic thrumming in the air and dancing on his skin like fairy footsteps.

“We should go,” Mihashi said at last, interrupting Abe’s increasingly bizarre train of thought, and though he didn’t notice the way he changed the subject, Abe didn’t push the issue. He was all too familiar that pushing Mihashi would cause the idiot to bolt off, and the last thing he wanted was a delay on stopping this stupid rain. So he shrugged, then jerked his head in the direction of the woods.

“You said he lives in there, right?” Mihashi nodded, seeming back to himself in the form of a nervous tongue darting out to wet his lips and the way his shoulders hunched up a bit to his ears. “All right. Lead the way, then.” Mihashi huffed in what seemed to be relief, picnic basket clutched to his chest as he spun on his heel then started walking off.

Mihashi’s pace was just short of brutal, and Abe spent the first ten minutes of their hike through the woods trying to decide if it made sense (because Mihashi knew the forest, obviously) or not (because really, _chicken legs_ ). Regardless, the trees passed by in a sea of glittering gray sky much faster than Abe had expected, and with a few sharp turns around particularly large trees, Abe found himself absolutely lost. It was okay and his faith was strong in Mihashi, or at least it was until he saw the same flower bush for the _third_ time.

“Mihashi, we’re going in _circles_!” he snapped, reaching a hand out to rest it against the bark of a conveniently placed birchwood tree.

“Oh, I know,” Mihashi’s answer came back. “We have to do it eight times.”

“ _Why?!”_

“It’s Nishihiro-kun’s favorite number,” Mihashi responded with only a blink of a break for him to catch his breath, and Abe decided in that moment, Abe decided that he was never going to like this Nishihiro guy, who was _clearly_ a sadist of epic proportion. Or maybe Mihashi was. Maybe both.

Just as Abe was trying to decide how much of being a witch required schadenfreude of epic proportion, Mihashi came to a halt in the middle of whatever nondescript path he’d been following. Abe managed to stop just short of running into the back of him, and then, with one step forward, the both of them stepped into a clearing that was _breathtaking._

“Wow,” Abe breathed, eyes wide as he took in everything around him. Wildflowers in all shades delighted in the green summer grass, and the rain had even seemed to understand the need for reprieve in the space as the incessant torrents turned simply to ferociously ugly skies. It made everything look dipped in silver, sparkling with the raindrops still clinging to their leaves and swaying beautifully in the breeze. Abe closed his eyes and inhaled, letting the sweet smell of something - lilies, maybe - pull a smile to his face.

“Isn’t it nice?” Mihashi asked, a smile wobbly on his face as he casted a glance up at Abe through golden eyelashes.

“Yeah.” _Nice_ , Abe thought sourly, hating the word and all its insufficiencies to describe the landscape around them. “It’s - It’s really spectacular.”

Mihashi preened, and the chickadee on top of his head took to the skies with a few _fee dee dee fee dee dee_ calls that rang like bells through the clearing. Abe watched him for a few moments before his stomach growled. Shocked, he looked down to his wrist to see that it was about lunch time.

“Whoa, that went by fast,” Abe said, and Mihashi nodded slightly from where he was hunched over trying to arrange a red and white checkered blanket on the damp ground.

“It’s - not really, but - Izumi-kun said - broken, time’s broken, here, in the forest...” Mihashi trailed off, visibly flailing to interpret what Izumi had told him. Abe felt his eyebrow twitch a bit in annoyance, but he stood firm, remembering having to buy the groceries and haul them into the woods when he started yelling. _Calming tea, remember the calming tea._

“Time’s broken?” Abe prompted, and Mihashi nodded, exhaling in relief. As if Abe repeating it meant he understood. “What does that even _mean_?”

“Uh,” Mihashi twiddled his fingers nervously together, looking everywhere around the two of them except Abe’s face. “It means... It means we have to pack a lunch, even though it’s not - not that far,” he answered, then got a sick look on his face. “I forgot one last time, and it wasn’t... urk....”

“Yeah, yeah,” Abe said, gaze focused on where Mihashi was now unloading the picnic basket while humming under his breath. He could tell from the sheer amount of sandwiches, little cakes, cookies, chips, _pasta salad, fruit - Jesus_ , this guy packed away some food somewhere in that tiny little body of his. But when Abe took a bite - _“Wow.”_

“Good?” Mihashi asked, the brightness on his face like a ray of sunshine in the gray around them. Abe swallowed despite wanting to keep the first bite of his little finger cake on his tongue forever.

“This is _so good_ ,” he said through the rest of his sandwich shoved into his mouth, though to his own ears it came out like _bff iff shh guhhf_. Mihashi stared at him, helplessly confused, so he swallowed and tried again. “I said it’s really good.”

“Oh, heh, thanks,” Mihashi said, wiggling in his spot and plucking at a loose thread on his sweater. “I, uh, I had to learn how to cook, so. It’s really fun! And not that hard, really. Though I don’t like frying things because sometimes it pops and scares my familiar.” Mihashi’s familiar made an angry little _kuhhh_ at that, fluffing up and looking a second away from pecking at Mihashi’s hairline. Abe tongued at the rich spices on the back of his teeth and thought about asking - why did he have to learn how to cook? Where were his parents? Did he _have_ parents? Or did witches like - spring out of the earth as adults, or something? Swirl into existence out of stardust?

Properly confusing himself, Abe continued the rest of his lunch in a calm silence with Mihashi at his side. The clearing rustled pleasantly, air thick with the promise of more rain and darkening a tad by the time they were done. Abe wondered if it was more of the whole time-being-broken-in-the-forest-thing and it was approaching nighttime, or if it was just a function of the clouds becoming thicker above them. Either way, he didn’t want to stick around.

“We should probably get going soon,” he said to Mihashi, who squawked around a bite of cake and looked at him with wide eyes. Then, Mihashi looked to the sky, neck arching a bit and Adam’s apple bobbing with a thick swallow.

“It’s getting worse,” he said, and Abe wasn’t sure if he meant the weather or the breaking of time. Neither sounded promising.

The two of them packed up the basket, Abe shooting Mihashi a disapproving glance when the blond decided that wadding up the blanket and stuffing it between dirty plates was the best method of transportation. Mihashi gave him a sheepish look, and then turned to walk through the clearing to the other side and back into the dense forest.

It was hard to tell beneath the trees whether it was raining again or whether each of the drops hitting Abe’s hood were just residual bits of the earlier downfall. He kept his eyes focused securely on Mihashi’s back, gaze glued between his shoulder blades as his legs fought to keep up. The last thing he wanted was to get lost in the middle of the forest when it was getting dark, and -

“ _Shit_ \- !” Abe slipped in some of the wet leaves clinging to the ground, arms flailing about as he tried to right himself. His right heel turned and caught in a shallow hole, and he fell to his ass, hard and right on a sharp stick. He hissed out a curse even as Mihashi turned and reached out a worried hand, fingers hovering uncertainly over Abe’s knee.

“Are you - ?!” Mihashi exclaimed, then, “I’m sorry, I’m - too fast - !”

“Oh God,” Abe said, because he wasn’t listening to Mihashi. His eyes focused on where his right foot had caught in a hole, and the place just next to it where a ditch with a few rocks sat in the bottom. If his shoe hadn’t bent just right, if he hadn’t managed to get his ankle stuck, he would have slipped even further -

Abe suddenly thought of Izumi’s warning the previous night, the caution to wear his old boots and not his new ones. That every time he wore the new ones, he died, somehow. His old boots which bent and gave more than the new leather of his recent purchase. He glanced down at the rocks and swallowed thickly, feeling more than a little nauseous.

“A-Abe-kun?” Mihashi’s voice pierced through the tempest in his gut, and Abe swallowed through it enough to hear how Mihashi’s voice was shaking. He was probably freaking out about how Abe wasn’t responding, how he probably sounded a bit like he’d just seen a ghost, so he nodded once.

“Yeah, I’m fine, just - slipped,” he said, pointedly not looking down at the little ditch below. It wasn’t very far down, he thought, unable to keep his gaze away for long. It would have been slow.

“Can you stand up?” Mihashi asked, even his familiar peeping softly at Abe from one of the nearby bushes. Abe huffed out a breath and stood, knees shaky with the lingering realization of how he might have - how he could have - if not for Izumi -

“I’m fine,” he said, both answering Mihashi and reassuring himself. He was fine - he was _alive_ , he hadn’t died in the middle of the forest while trying to keep up with Mihashi. “Why are you walking so fast, anyway?!”

“I, I’m sorry, I’m just trying to get to Nishihiro-kun as fast as possible, and so I - ” Mihashi’s mouth clammed shut, and Abe sighed. Right; Mihashi was trying to help his friend. It only made sense that he’d be putting a little bit of hustle into his step. “I’ll - ! I’ll slow down, though!” Mihashi said, hands clenched into eager fists at his chest. “So Abe-kun can - !”

“No, it’s - ” Abe huffed, crossing his arms. “It’s fine, I get that you’re worried - ”

“But, but Abe-kun, you - ”

“I’m _fine!_ ”

Mihashi’s face turned a splotchy red, mouth twisting into an unpleasant shape. Whatever he was about to say, however, was lost in the sudden flash of light that swept over the both of them. Abe’s first startled thought was something along the lines of _oh god are aliens real too_ , before he heard someone calling out into the rain.

“Hello? Who’s there? Mi - Mihashi, is that you?!”

Mihashi’s face cleared immediately, perking up and shoulders falling just a tad in relief. “Nishihiro-kun! We’re over here!” he called, raising an arm and waving it about. Abe, standing next to him, mouthed the word _flashlight_ and tried not to feel too stupid for having thought _aliens._ He really needed a vacation from this witch business.

“Oh, Mihashi, it really is you,” said Nishihiro, who was wearing a heavy-duty raincoat. His face turned towards Abe, who saw sharp cheekbones and sad eyes. “And who’s this?”

“Abe Takaya,” Abe introduced himself, extending a hand to shake. Nishihiro grabbed it, and his hands were warm despite the rain.

“I’m Nishihiro Shintaro. I’m guessing you know about us since Mihashi brought you here,” he said. Abe nodded, and so did Mihashi, who was about standing on his toes he was leaning in so close.

“He’s the one - Izumi said - he’s !” Mihashi said, starting about thirty different sentences and some even in Japanese. Nishihiro seemed to understand, however, and he hummed thoughtfully, eyes flicking back over to Abe.

“I see... Well, you two can come on into my home for the night. It’s dreadful out there, and what with the forest in a mess like it is, it’ll be no condition for you two to go back out tonight.”

Abe followed Nishihiro over a little embankment, and sure enough, there was a cute little home on the edge of a - well, it was too large to call it a creek, and really it was too small to be a river, too. It was almost black in the dark night that had dropped so suddenly around them, though it framed the charming little cottage home so nicely.

The home itself looked to be made of some kind of light-colored wood, with blue shutters and a charming little stone path going up towards the front door. Opposite the doorbell by the front door was a hanging wind charm that twinkled in the night. It was odd, though, Abe thought as they walked down the hill to get closer to the house; the charm didn’t invoke a summery, homey feel. Rather, it rang out hollowly, making Abe feel nostalgic rather than welcomed to his final destination. On the bottom was a silver disc that spun in slow circles, catching the light and breaking it into thousands of pieces against the wilted garden next to them.

“Come on in, come on in,” Nishihiro said, pulling his hood down even as he started unlocking the front door. Abe leaned his head back and peered up at the sky, and sure enough, the rain was finally abetting enough to allow him to drop his own hood down. He lifted both hands and pulled it back, shaking his hair to get it some air after being cooped up so long. “We should get inside and - ah, Mihashi, can you make the tea? I know it’s terrible of me to ask, but you’re so good...”

“Oh, yeah, of course!” Mihashi said, practically glowing under the praise. He disappeared into what Abe assumed was the kitchen, and Abe looked to see that Nishihiro was now looking at him while tucking his raincoat onto a coatrack.

“So, Abe-san, how much about us do you know?” Nishihiro asked, and Abe must have had some kind of odd look on his face because in the next moment Nishihiro laughed, raising a friendly palm in the air. “No, no, it’s all right. If Mihashi trusts you, then I trust you.”

And that - yeah, that kind of put the words for how Abe was feeling into his lap, gave him the words for the question he hadn’t really known to ask. “Just Abe is fine. So, you all are witches. Like, magic-wielding, time-traveling, plant-growing witches. And you all just - live here? In the forest? Where anyone could find you?”

Nishihiro sat down on a plush red couch and gestured at the armchair across from him. Abe sat down. “Well, not all of us live in the forest. We’re a little more scattered than that, and we’ve gotten pretty good at hiding. Most of us, anyway,” he said, with a quick glance towards the kitchen that had Abe feeling a pinch of amusement. Yeah, Mihashi wasn’t going to be stealthy in a crowd any time soon. “But there are things we do to hide. Wards around the forest, even things as simple as plants that make you itch to walk through them and snakes that are poisonous when they bite.”

“But it is a problem. Getting found out,” Abe said. “Y’know, the whole _burn the witch_ deal?” Nishihiro sighed, glancing down at the rug beneath their feet and dragging his toes through the strands to make an indiscernible pattern.

“Most people wouldn’t believe you, anyway, if you told them. Witches are a thing of children’s stories - and we’re okay with that. And it’s not - we don’t have to worry so much about being ‘burned at the stake’ _._ There are worse things for a witch.”

Mihashi came into the room where they were sitting, tray in hand and familiar somewhere unseen. He put the tray on the table between them, pouring three cups of tea and passing them out accordingly. Abe looked to Mihashi, raising a single eyebrow, and Mihashi flushed a light pink. “Um, for protection, the - there are some things, for...” Nishihiro laughed gently across from where Abe was sitting, though Abe ignored him in favor of bringing the tea to his face to smell.

“Don’t - not yet - !”

“I’m just smelling it!” Abe snapped, and Mihashi squawked, wiggling in his chair and eyes darting to and from Abe like he didn’t want to stare but couldn’t help but look to make sure he wasn’t going to drink it too soon. Abe huffed and decided to ignore him too, bringing the cup to his nose once more. It had a sharp earthy scent to it this time, and it smelled - fresh? Bright and with a lightness to it that opened his sinuses and made him think of citrus and salt.

“Cilantro,” Nishihiro said, eyes closed. Mihashi made an indignant noise. “It protects gardeners and their homes.”

Abe scrunched up his face. “I’m not really sure that’ll work on me,” he said. He wasn’t a _gardener._

Nishihiro hid a smile behind the back of his hand as he leaned onto the arm of the couch and peered at Abe. “Do you have a garden?”

“Yeah, but - ”

“Then it’ll work,” Nishihiro said. Abe huffed and looked over to Mihashi, who was staring sulkily and pink-faced into his own cup of tea. It was kind of disgustingly adorable, and Abe hated himself a little bit for thinking it. “So, I suppose the two of you are here because of the rain.”

Abe straightened, looking to Mihashi once more before looking to Nishihiro. “You’re the rain witch, right? So what gives?” There was probably a more delicate way to ask a witch how to help them, but honestly whatever, the rain was exhausting, his poor little garden was getting drowned out, and if he had to deal with one more day of mud getting dragged through his kitchen, he was going to lose it. Plus, it would be nice to be able to use his bike to get into town, but that was a hell no until the dirt roads got dried out.

Nishihiro’s shoulders drooped. “Honestly, I don’t really know. I’ve done everything I can possibly think of to fix whatever it is that’s wrong, but nothing’s worked. I thought - ” Nishihiro dropped off, glancing quickly to Mihashi and licking his lips nervously before he continued, “ - I thought it might have been because I went into the swamp.”

“You - ?!” Mihashi said, face going sickeningly pale and teacup clanging against the saucer in his other hand. “You went - the - ?!”

“There’s a swamp around here?” Abe asked stupidly, because other than the dirt road between his house and the town of Nishiura post epic rains a la Nishihiro, he was pretty sure there wasn’t any kind of major swamp-type land around.

“Not - not a normal swamp,” Nishihiro said, shifting nervously on the couch. “It’s. It’s not a good place. Swamps in general tend to be, uh, darker places, magically speaking. The energies there that collect lean more towards death and rebirth, so sometimes, if you’re careful, they can actually be powerful tools to use, but - ”

“But this swamp is _bad_ ,” Mihashi interrupted, looking wide-eyed and terrified at Nishihiro. “Why would you go there?!”

“I was with Tajima,” Nishihiro said, face falling. “He was. He was looking for Hanai.”

Mihashi’s face cringed into something horrible for a moment, a wince that was as sick as it was pained. “He thinks - he thinks Hanai-kun is - ?”

“No,” Nishihiro said, decisively. “No, if nothing else, we know that he’s not. He’s still alive. But more importantly, the problems with the rain started after he and I went there,” Nishihiro said, tapping a finger on the arm of the couch as he thought. “It was a while after, maybe a few weeks. I’m not completely sure, because of how time has broken around here. It might have been longer. I can’t tell what the passage of time is on my house anymore, and my clocks have all warped. They’re completely unusable. Honestly, this isn’t really safe for you to be here, Abe. The time doesn’t have as strong a pull on us because we’re witches, but as a human...”

“He’s safe with me,” Mihashi said, voice as firm as the stone wall of Abe’s garden. It startled him enough to hear the tone out of Mihashi’s voice that Abe glanced at him, and just like before with the quiet defiance in his garden, Abe remembered Mihashi’s golden eyes and soft hands on the bark of a tree. It occurred to him that maybe he _should_ be scared, seeing Mihashi the witch and his protector being such an idiot, but - but somehow he wasn’t. He’d followed Mihashi blindly into a magic forest, through bent time and warped space and - and he’d go even further, probably.

“I’m not worried,” he said at last, looking away from Mihashi’s still face and back to Nishihiro, who looked intrigued but didn’t say anything. “So, to recap. You went to this haunted swamp and your magic broke maybe two weeks later, but you’re not sure because time is weird here, presumably that punk Izumi’s fault - ”

“Hey,” Nishihiro said, face pulling into a frown that Abe promptly bowled right over.

“ - and you’re not sure _how_ it broke, or when it broke, but you can’t fix it and you feel fine. That about sum it up?” Nishihiro still looked offended on Izumi’s behalf, but his lips remained sealed and he just nodded his agreement. Great. Fucking great, he was going to have to fix a witch’s problem when the witch didn’t even know what was wrong.

Before Abe could say anything else on the subject matter, a clock over Abe’s shoulder cuckoo’d eleven times, then just a moment letter, released twelve. As if his body was responding to the time going forward so rapidly, Abe rapidly felt deathly tired, unused to staying up so late - it was barely sundown just a half hour ago but now it was midnight and he was so _tired_ -

“Oh, no,” Mihashi said, pressing the back of his hand to Abe’s forehead gently. Abe felt his eyelids flutter shut, because for some reason, that simple touch felt so, so good on his skin. “Did you finish your tea?” Abe didn’t answer, just leaned further into the place where they were touching, seeking more. “Abe-kun, Abe-kun, you have to finish your tea.”

“’s cold by now,” Abe said, even though that wasn’t quite right, was it, because Mihashi had made the tea not even half an hour ago - _hours it had been hours hours hours -_

“Drink it. Drink it right now,” Mihashi said, pressing a cup into Abe’s hands. It was still warm, still smelling of the cilantro and - and some other flavors too, flavors that felt like home, like his mother’s kitchen, like the way she would put her hand on his forehead when he wasn’t feeling good - “ _Abe-kun._ ”

Abe brought the cup to his lips and started drinking the tea. It wasn’t cold like he expected, but it wasn’t piping hot either, so he was able to drink it more quickly than he normally would have. Mihashi’s eyes were locked on his mouth, making sure he was finishing the cup down to the last drop, probably, but somehow that started a cinder in Abe’s belly that he recognized right away. He felt himself flush under Mihashi’s stare, not really used to feeling himself get turned on by _someone_ instead of just like, jerking it before he went to bed because it made him fall asleep faster. He finished the whole teacup then licked his lips to get any residual bits of magic into his body, and also because he - he didn’t know _why_ but - he wanted to see Mihashi’s eyes track the motion. Mihashi didn’t disappoint, and though his cheeks didn’t pink up like Abe had expected, he did maybe see Mihashi’s eyes dilate, just a pinch, and -

Like a punch to the gut, Abe felt immediately better, and Mihashi exhaled in relief over him. Abe was suddenly aware that Mihashi’s hand had been resting on his cheek, thumb tracing the skin gently to calm him, and this time his flush was from embarrassment from having needed that. “What - What just happened,” Abe croaked out, voice rough like he hadn’t used it for days.

“That’s what happens to humans that get lost in time,” Nishihiro said, standing in the doorway with his arms folded. Abe squinted, wondering how much time he’d just lost, how long Mihashi had been hovering over him trying to bring him back from whatever void he’d just fallen into. He brought his eyes back over to Mihashi, and saw, now, that he looked a little worn, a little more tired than he probably should.

“Are you okay?” he asked, hyper-aware of the hand Mihashi still had cupping his cheek. It was odd, because he was sure now that he wasn’t in whatever plane of existence had him feeling so lost and - and _turned on_ by _Mihashi,_ but he still didn’t want Mihashi to move his hand, still felt like that touch was _meant_ to be there.

“I’ll be fine,” was Mihashi’s answer, a small smile quirking the corner of his lips before it died again. “I’m, I’m sorry, I should have - I should have been watching you more - ’s my fault, and then earlier, you - ”

Abe reached out and placed a hand over Mihashi’s on his cheek, hoping that his touch would calm Mihashi as much as Mihashi’s touch seemed to be calming him. It worked, a little, but not enough. “Hey,” he said, gripping a little harder and making sure all of Mihashi’s attention was on him. “You didn’t do anything wrong, okay? You’re just - You haven’t dealt with humans a lot, right?” Mihashi shook his head no, and Abe nodded. “See, you’re fine. You just have to learn, and I’ll help teach you. We’ll figure it out together.”

At this point, Mihashi looked like he was going to break into tears, which was a little more of a moment than he really wanted to be having in front of Nishihiro; nothing against the guy (except his whole Gotta Circle My House Eight Times, _that_ was bullshit), but Abe didn’t want Mihashi to break down in front of his friend, not when the two of them were going to be the strong saviors of his witchy powers. Or something.

“Come on. Let’s go back to my house and we can talk about how we’re going to go forward,” Abe said, because he was pretty sure they were going to need to go to this swamp to check it out and he _really_ didn’t want to have _that_ particular conversation in front of Nishihiro.

“Oh, you’re leaving already?” Nishihiro said, tilting his head with a sad smile. “Well, I’ll get you two a little basket or something for the walk back. Wouldn’t want you to get hungry!”

Before he could move, though, there was the distinct sound on the roof of the ever-familiar drops of rain starting. Abe looked out the window over by the bookcase, and sure enough, the rain had picked back up, soaking the earth around them in the sheets that had covered Saitama since he’d moved in. And in an instant, Abe remembered when they’d arrived, as soon as Nishihiro had found them -

“Or, maybe we’ll stay,” he said, plastering a fake grin on his face and looking to a very confused now Mihashi. “Don’t you think it would be better to wait until the rain stops?”

“Um,” Mihashi said, and while he was waiting, Abe glanced out the window to see - _yes_ , just as he’d suspected. The thick walls of rain had lessened, and now it was just a few drops, like the hopeful rains that pricked the beginning of spring -

“No, you’re right, we have to go,” Abe said, ears pricked for the rain to pick up - “but, hey, Nishihiro, you could come with us, if you want.”

“H-Huh?” Nishihiro said, startled into taking a step off the doorframe. “Come... Come with you?” he repeated.

“Yeah, you’ve gotta be crazy lonely out here all by yourself. And I bet no one likes to come down here since it’s such a crazy pain in the ass with time being all weird,” Abe said. To his ears, the rain lessened, then stopped again, leaving angry swirling skies visible through the window.

“Lonely...?” Nishihiro repeated, then again, more softly, “Lonely...”

Mihashi blinked at Abe, then looked at the ceiling, and Abe saw the moment that it clicked for him, too. “Oh, you said - Nishihiro-kun said that you were okay until after the time broke around your house, right? And you already live a little far, so...”

Nishihiro looked small in the doorway, staring at the two of them blankly. “Lonely?” he said again, and then his face slowly fell, a pathetic, sad smile on his face. “Was that it? Was I just lonely?”

“It hurts when no one comes to see you,” Mihashi said, slipping off the arm of the chair Abe had been sitting in and coming over to stand in front of his friend. “Even if you don’t know it hurts.”

“I guess...? I... I didn’t even realize...” Nishihiro’s face crumpled, eyes watering as he brought his hands to his face and made a soft, hiccuping cry. “I-I didn’t even realize - how _long_ it’s been - I’m - ”

Mihashi reached out and took one of the hands Nishihiro had pressed to his face and held it between his, tightly, as he stared up into Nishihiro’s face. “I’ll come see you... lots! So Nishihiro-kun doesn’t have to worry... doesn’t have to feel lonely anymore!”

“Y-Yeah?” Nishihiro said, voice wobbly and lost despite the fact that there was a small smile beginning to grow. “I’d - I’d like that, Mihashi. And - and you too, Abe. If it’s okay...”

“Of course,” Abe said, though, “as long as I don’t have to walk around your house eight times ever again.”

Nishihiro hiccuped a laugh, and he nodded, wiping his face and then taking a clear, long breath in and out. “Well, you two should get going. I feel so much better, really. I didn’t even realize - well. Regardless, I’ll be better about going to see others, and you tell everyone to come visit me more often! I’m not _that_ far out,” he said, and Mihashi nodded ten thousand times per second, then gave a wobbly smile before turning to Abe.

“Ready?” he asked, and Abe nodded, standing from the armchair. He reached over to the coatrack and grabbed his raincoat, ready to pull it on, but Nishihiro opened the front door for them and -

Abe felt his breath escape his body in a rush, eyes wide on the beauty before him. The world was _sparkling_ in the morning sun, raindrops catching the gentle rays and breaking them into thousands of rainbows. Lush green grass filled the landscape, wildflowers dancing in a gentle breeze as the river behind them babbled with fat fish and slick rocks. He felt his eyes prick with moisture, so moved by beauty in the moment, so startled by the sudden explosion of life around him that had been so deadened for so long.

“Wow,” Nishihiro said, then he laughed, wiping his face one last time. “Okay, you two. Go fix everyone else now. We’ve gotta get things back into gear! It’s our job, Mihashi!”

Mihashi looked back to Nishihiro and gave him a brilliant, dazzling smile that was even more amazing than the sunrise just over his shoulder. “Yeah! We will!” he said, and then, basket in one hand and Abe’s wrist in the other, he stepped forward, tugging Abe along behind him.

 

 


	4. line of silver

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [extends leg] bonjour, it is i, sam ficteer, who promised a botws update and instead, This,
> 
> long chap!! because i had so many things i wanted to shove in here and it just Happened that way :( i know you're so upset :(( [beatboxes] anyway this chapter has one of my FAVORITE scenes from the planning stages so enjoy :)

 

Through the wafting steam of an early morning cup of coffee, Abe glared at the muddy mess that was his vegetable garden. Now that the rain wasn’t completely obstructing his view of what he had to work with, it was quite clear that what had appeared to be dark, healthy mess just waiting for him to break into it was little more than a pile of muck.

“Christ,” he muttered, taking a long sip of his coffee and feeling his mouth slant unpleasantly. For starters, his two tomatoes were sitting in the bottom of their cages, looking positively drowned out and yet somehow still wilting. His bell pepper hadn’t budged an inch in growth since he’d bought it, his rosemary looked more like some kind of cactus, his blueberries were not even considering blooms let alone fruit, and his basil was jaundiced and awful. Sourly, he plucked a leaf off and popped it in his mouth, then spat it out with a cringe. Gross.

Nine witches, Abe thought, swirling the dredges of his coffee around in the bottom of his mug. Nishihiro’s rainbow-bringing smile had fixed the rain, but that had just been the beginning. That meant that there still eight problems in his garden that no amount of tilling around in the mud would fix, eight witches whose problems he’d have to figure out, eight people - were they “people”? - he’d have to find and take care of.

“But first, you,” Abe grunted, putting his coffee mug down since it was empty and rolling up his sleeves to his elbows. Then, with a slick squish of boots in the detritus of his garden, Abe set to pull the weeds (oh god he hoped that one was a weed, it looked disturbingly like the bean sprout right next to it).

Abe worked until his stomach growled in protest, dragging dirt back into the beds from where it had all washed away, piling the weeds into a single mess in the middle of his yard, and once again wrestling (unsuccessfully) with the two tomato cages. One was now mostly straight, and the one on the left had only _one_ bent foot, so all in all it was definitely a victory.

Abe washed off most of the dirt and grime in his laundry room before crossing into the kitchen to make something to eat. He poked around and stuck the last of a whole chicken onto a piece of bread, eating glumly as he stared into his near-empty fridge. Another grocery run was in his future, for sure.

“Oh,” he said into the room, pausing mid-thought as he realized that _no more rain_ meant _biking into town._ The dirt roads would probably be a mess, still, but honestly it would be no better in his car than it would be on his bike. He chewed thoughtfully on his chicken, then stuck three bites worth into his mouth whole and making for his front door. Chipmunking the rest of his lunch on his way to his bike, Abe pulled on his new boots  and started out the door. Hopefully Izumi’s warning about _not wearing his new boots or he’d die_ would still not hold true - the old ones were still a filthy muddy mess in the laundry room and he wasn’t looking forward to getting them cleaned any time soon.

His bike was still parked by the garage exactly where he’d left it when he’d moved in, unused because of the torrent Nishihiro had brought onto the town. Abe tested the brakes, kicked both tires, then flung a leg over and pushed off. His basket rattled just a bit, but with a quick slap, it slid into place and hung like a charm.

The dirt roads were about as bad as he’d expected, filled with potholes and careening into now-dangerous crevices on the side of the road that looked like they could honestly eat his car in two bites. He stuck to the middle of the road, focusing on taking the hill as slowly as he felt safe doing without missing too much of the gorgeous scenery around him. He wondered, suddenly, if the thick trees lining both sides of the dirt road were all part of Mihashi’s forest, if there was just one bit tangle of life and growth that the witches called home; he made a mental note to ask when he next saw Mihashi.

As if also celebrating the lack of rain, the town of Nishiura was bustling with people. They filled the sidewalks and packed the stores, voices carrying and the smell of food carts wafting to Abe’s nose and reminding him of his hurried subpar lunch. He got off by one of the many town squares, still soggy and wet but looking better despite the black clouds still hanging menacingly in the sky. He locked his bike, then started to step off onto the sidewalk just in time to smack dead into someone walking past.

“Whoa - !” he said, reaching out and snagging the young woman’s arm to keep her from falling. She recovered from her flinch, eyes blinking stupidly into Abe’s as he released her. “Uh, you okay? Sorry for running into you.”

“Oh - yes! Yes, I’m fine! How’s your garden?” she asked, and Abe watched as she recovered, brushing herself off and beaming into his face. “I can’t imagine it’s doing much more than swimming right now if it’s anything like mine, heh!”

“Uh,” Abe said, smartly, trying to figure out where he should have met her before since she obviously knew him. Then - maybe she was a witch? Were they talking about him in their little social circle or something?

It must have been painfully obvious that he had no idea who she was, because she blinked once, then smiled awkwardly. “Shinooka Chiyo? I work at the general store?”

“Right, I remember,” Abe said, vaguely remembering her helping him get the plants into his car. The notes he’d stuck on his fridge still had the recommendations and tips she’d given him - right, right, he remembered. “Yeah, it’s really tough. A lot of it washed away. Spent all morning getting it back into place.”

“You are a brave soul,” Shinooka said sagely, nodding slowly. “I haven’t had the courage to work on that myself since it’ll probably start raining any second now and all my hard work will be done.”

“Shouldn’t be a problem,” Abe said, wanting to repay her just a little with inside knowledge since she’d done so much for him in the beginning. “Probably. If I had to guess.” _Why_ _was he so bad at basic human interaction?!_

Shinooka hummed thoughtfully, then sighed as she looked to the sky. “Yeah, I guess you’re right. It’s just so hard to believe it’s going to be good weather when those clouds are still hanging in the sky like that, y’know? What I wouldn’t _give_ to see the sun again!”

And - huh, Abe hadn’t thought about that. He looked up at the sky, angry and gray as it had been while Nishihiro was still hung heavy in his funk. Nishihiro was the rain witch, after all. The rain had been fixed, but the clouds - the clouds were still a problem.

“Yeah, can’t grow with messed up clouds, huh?” Abe said, glancing at Shinooka out of the corner of his eye to watch her reaction. Sure enough, she sighed, shoulders heaving as she tilted her head into the palm of her hand and stared mournfully into the sky.

“Definitely not. If they’d just go away, maybe my poor onions would actually do something besides make me cry - and not in a good way!” She said the last bit with a touch of laughter, looking back down to Abe with a friendly smile. “Oh, gosh, you were probably here to do something and I’ve just been running my mouth.”

Abe chewed on his lower lip thoughtfully. Cloud witch... he couldn’t go ask Mihashi about it, considering the fact that he couldn’t go five steps into the forest without getting snatched up into those nasty wards. Nishihiro was definitely out too for the same reason, and Izumi -

“Observatory," Abe said, remembering Mihashi’s directions. “Where’s the observatory on the hill?”

Shinooka’s face screwed up messily. “Observatory on the hill... Oh, that old place? I didn’t know it was still open.”

“Yeah, uh, a friend of mine works there. Can you tell me how to get there?” he asked, and Shinooka looked at his bike with a very unsubtle frown.

“Well, yes, but I don’t think you can bike there very easily. At least not unless you’re up for quite a haul, though I think there’s a shortcut you can take through the forest if you’re the brave type.”

 _Hell no_. “Tell me the regular way so I can take my car, then,” Abe said; not that he was actually going to go _get_ his car, but _hell_ if he was going to take a step into the forest without Mihashi there to guide him.

“Okay. It’s on the east side of town, but it’s up on top of the hill - well, we call it a hill but it’s not _really_ a hill, it’s more like a mountain, really - and you can only get to it from the far side by road. So you have to go out until you get to a fork in the road. You’ll turn left, then keep going until you find a huge bridge. Go over the bridge, and you can get up to the road that way.”

“Fork, left, over the bridge,” Abe said. Shinooka nodded, but then tapped a fist on her open palm.

“Ah, though, if you’re taking your car, I think the bridge path is a little narrow for it? There’s another way around Himiko-san’s corn field, but it takes a long time unless you go _really_ fast, which you don’t wanna do because Yamato-san - ah, that’s the sheriff - always eats lunch at Himiko-san’s restaurant out there and he’ll catch you super fast!”

Shinooka looked like she had definite experience with Yamato-san and his speeding tickets, though he was pretty sure he wouldn’t have a problem with that on his bike. “Right, so go around the corn field and it’ll pick up the road on the other side of the bridge?”

“Yep!” Shinooka said, smile coming back onto her face.

“Awesome. Thanks, Shinooka,” Abe said, and with a cheerful wave, Shinooka walked past Abe and presumably continued onto whatever errand she’d been on before running into him. Fortuitous, though, Abe thought, looking towards the east side of town. Sure enough, just in the distance, he could make out on the far horizon what looked like a huge hill covered in trees. There wasn’t a building visible from the square for him to confirm as the observatory, but it was in the right direction and he needed to find the cloud witch.

Abe unlocked his bike and hopped back on it, starting a steady pedal towards the east exit of town. The road he was on seemed to be one of the main drags out, cars passing by and filling the road with just enough excitement to keep him on his toes. He was thankful, suddenly, for the clouds keeping the temperature down - he hadn’t packed enough water for any kind of long excursion up a mountain.

Probably an hour passed before Abe came across what was definitely the fork in the road Shinooka had mentioned. He turned towards the left fork, peering through the trees surrounding the bend in the road to see if he could make out the bridge or if it was too far in the distance to see yet. Only the paved road was visible, still holding a few puddles and lingering debris from the incessant rain -

The next few seconds were a blur of motion, and it wasn’t until he hit the ground and had the breath knocked out of him that Abe realized something had happened. He remained perfectly still, chest slowly expanding as he gasped out a breath that was bright and crisp from where his face was smushed into the green grass on the side of the road. There was a dull pain flaring up his left leg and a slight twinge to his right wrist, but other than that, he seemed to be unhurt.

He closed his eyes, taking in one last deep breath as he started to gather up the energy to sit up and examine the damage, only for his eyes to snap open as he recognized the smell beneath his face.

Not grass. _Cilantro_.

“Mihashi,” he breathed, and then his heart started to race, another one of Izumi’s warnings flashed into his mind as if the sharp smell of herb pierced it into place. _Don’t turn left on the path on the east side of town until after your blueberries come in._ “Shit. _Shit.”_

Abe rolled over quickly and sat up, hands carefully checking his body for more injuries than his initial examination had shown. He rolled his ankle - a little twinged, but not sprained, not broken - curled his wrist around - fine now that he wasn’t putting any weight on it - his skull - rattled, scraped with mud, but otherwise fine - every piece of his body that was a danger if hurt.

Then, he paused, looking slowly down to the ground where he’d landed that was still indented from impact. Slowly, Abe reached over and plucked some of the cilantro out of the ground, bringing it closer to inspect. Curious, he grabbed his cell phone out and punched in the quick search - _does cilantro grow in the summer_. He scrolled down, throat closing tight as his skin felt tight as a drum over his insides: _no, cilantro doesn’t grow in the summer - cool weather plant - spring and fall -_

“Mihashi,” Abe said again, looking from his phone to the cilantro - growing _wild,_ out of _season_ for fuck’s sake - with a heaviness in his gut that made it hard to breathe. He glanced up at the road and saw nothing that would have caused his bike to crash; no rock, no branch, no pothole. He swallowed thickly, rubbing the cilantro between his fingers delicately and watching the pads of his fingertips stain green beneath it.

With a shaky exhale, Abe stood from the ground, more unnerved by the fact that he’d almost just biked unwittingly into his death than the fact that he’d fallen off his bike. He picked it up - unharmed, thankfully - and climbed back on, eyes drifting briefly to the green on his fingers before he started pedaling back towards where he came, to the fork that Izumi had warned him about. He stopped, feet coming down to the pavement, waited a breath, then pushed off and continued straight.

As promised by Shinooka, the corn quickly filled the left side of the road, pale green and nowhere near ready to harvest. It didn’t match the picture of corn he had in his head - thick and tall and jade seas speckled with hints of gold - and he wasn’t sure if that was because of the time of the year or because of the way nature was still so messed up. It hit him then that it wasn’t just his backyard having troubles - this huge corn farm probably fed the whole town of Nishiura, maybe even more. He’d always heard how Nishiura was so famous for its produce, but now - now, that was all in jeopardy, and he was the only one who could fix it. God help him but he’d gone and gotten involved, just like Shun’s anime predicted he would.

Abe kept biking, following the long road through the gentle hills of corn and not-quite-green grass. He spotted the restaurant with the cop car parked in front, then kept going, past more corn, then even more, until finally he came upon a four-way stop. He turned to the left, pausing only briefly to drink a bit of water from the one bottle he’d brought. He’d have to ration the majority of it for the climb up the hill, for sure.

After an absolutely disgusting amount of corn, the sky started to darken even through the clouds, until Abe finally turned on the light on the front of his bike. Shinooka hadn’t been kidding, he thought belatedly. He kept pushing until finally corn changed into forest, black as inky night by the time he’d reached it.

At last, there was another left turn, and Abe took it, sticking to the right side of the road and looking for a way up the hill. The road itself was already getting steeper, making its way up the hill-mountain thing and up towards the observatory. It was an older road, clearly not serviced as often as the main road Abe had left behind, and it took more focus in the dark with only the light on the front of his bike to guide him.

Just when he was going to stop and pull out his phone for some directions, Abe saw a small road with an old wooden sign next to it. He stopped biking, chugging down half his water with a sharp exhale before he stepped off for just a second. Putting the kickstand into place with a sharp clang, Abe made his way over to the overgrown sign. He reached out, pulling at the foliage covering it before he grabbed his phone and shined a light onto the peeling paint. Beneath decades of weathering was block lettering and an ancient picture of some stars and the moon over a dome, revealing that this was the entrance road to the NISHIURA OBSERVATORY.

“Finally,” he muttered, turning back to his bike and hopping on. Then, with a strong push, he started up the long road through the trees. The pavement meandered about, cutting back and forth as it made its way up the hill ( _hill_ , that was a fucking _joke_ ), through what Abe was sure was a gorgeous ride when it wasn’t pushing at least eleven at night.

It was a sudden turn around a corner that had the observatory finally reveal itself, a huge building made out of cut stone with an arched dome on top. He couldn’t quite make out the material or color of the building, but he did see a car and a pickup truck in the otherwise empty parking lot. He biked over to them, then beyond, close to where there was a single light by a door. He stepped off his bike, leaned it against the wall, then knocked loudly.

The booms of his fist against the metal echoed eerily through what sounded like an empty building, and Abe felt the hairs on the back of his neck rise. He glanced over his shoulder into the tree line, but he didn’t see anything except the vague impression of trees and darkness. He turned back to the door, knocking again. He waited, shifting his weight side to side, before he once again felt the need to look over his shoulder into the forest. The forest which wasn’t safe after dark, the forest that he needed to avoid, the forest that had nearly trapped him and killed him and - and -

A sudden spike of anxiety had Abe’s hand flying to the door handle of the observatory and twisting the damn thing open. He stepped inside into even more darkness, the metal shutting surprisingly quietly behind him. It was a different kind of darkness, though - a softer darkness, one that wasn’t menacing so much as... nostalgic, or...  melancholy, almost? A darkness that somehow reminded him of the hallway to his parents’ room when he was a child - long and empty and so very dark but still somehow safe from anything that could hurt him. It was a bizarre floaty feeling from his toes up, almost like he had stepped through a void of time instead of into an old abandoned observatory.

“Izumi?” he called out, though he was surprised to find that he couldn’t raise his voice beyond much more than a whisper. He cleared his throat, but that too was swallowed in the darkness around him, like the way his knees were shaking and how he was suddenly aware of how cold his skin felt. He took a step forward, barely able to make out a fuzzy impression of _things_ around him without fumbling into walls or stairs. The observatory was made out of what seemed like endless mazes metal stairs and fences, starlight void from the one place he could see out of the dome for the clouds above.

Abe walked forward a few steps before he caught the softness of voices, murmured and intimate somewhere close. He looked around, trying to see if he could see Izumi or _anyone_ really, but before he could open his mouth to call out, halfway up a flight of stairs, he finally saw around a corner to what looked like a sprawled futon piled with sheets in a nook off the balcony. The walls were caressed with the minimal light from a blue salt lamp, but what caught Abe’s eye was the soft glowing from someone’s - from _Izumi’s_ back.

“Half,” came a soft murmur from the second person on the makeshift bed, his fingertips tracing the line of silver and black circles down Izumi’s spine. The touch was just a skim of a touch, pausing where a half-circle seemed to be emitting the same glow as the salt lamp, but shimmery and feeling somehow otherworldly. “You’ll have to decide soon, then.”

A breath of a laugh escaped into the open expanse of the observatory. “Are you seriously going to sit there and try and educate _me_ on what the first quarter means?” Izumi’s voice came back, equally reverent with a gentle tease in the night, and oh, _oh_ , Abe remembered the black tattooed circle at the base of Izumi’s neck and - _oh,_ they were _phases of the moon -_

 _“_ Not tell. Remind, maybe,” the other person said, leaning in so his face pressed into the corner of Izumi’s shoulder and neck. Abe suddenly felt the violation of a private space, a scene he shouldn’t be seeing, and he jerked back, taking a hard step back onto a stair below and hearing himself make a noise for the first time as if whatever pillow had smothered him since walking in was finally lifted.

“Who - ?!” someone said, Izumi or the other guy Abe didn’t know, and he stood still at the landing of the stairs since running from a witch - maybe two - into the forest at night seemed like an even dumber idea than getting caught snooping around. He lifted a hand when a light shined painfully into his eyes, just in time to hear a soft swear and - “Abe, Jesus Christ, you’re fucking early. How rude can you get?”

Abe peered through his fingers as best as he could, then lowered his hand altogether when the light went out at the _“Fumiki, c’mon, turn that thing off, you’re gonna blind the asshole,_ ” he made out. He blinked into the sudden reappearance of the darkness, what little bit of night vision he’d gotten screwed to hell.

“Oh, this is him?” the other guy - Fumiki? - said, and Abe glanced up once he could actually see anything besides bright little dots to see that the both of them were now wearing shirts. Fumiki’s was on backwards, the tag sticking up between his collarbones. “I thought you said he wasn’t gonna come until two!”

“He doesn’t, usually,” Izumi said, coming down the stairs with bare feet until he was about even with Abe, unimpressed blue eyes glancing him head to toe. “You are a bit more banged up, though. What the hell happened?”

“I fell off my bike,” Abe said, rolling his eyes as Izumi barked out a laugh. “Yeah, yeah, I almost died, though. Forgot what you said about the left turn on the road.”

Izumi’s face lost all of its humor immediately, eyebrow raising sharply. “You turned left at the fork before your blueberries came in? How the fuck are you still alive? Like, don’t get me wrong, I’m glad and all that jazz, but that’s literally never happened before and this isn’t exactly my first rodeo.”

Abe swallowed, the fingers of his right hand rubbing together gently. “I think... Mihashi saved me, somehow. There was cilantro on the side of the road.”

“Cilantro? Cilantro doesn’t grow in the wild around here,” Fumiki said, finally coming down the stairs and standing at Izumi’s side. He had a baffled expression on his face. “Especially not in the summer. It’d roast alive.”

“Cilantro, huh?” Izumi said, seemingly ignoring Fumiki’s commentary and getting an indignant squawk for it. He sighed, then jerked a thumb over his shoulder. “Oh, right. Abe, this is Mizutani. Mizutani, this is Abe, two hours early but here nonetheless.”

“Nice to meet you,” Abe said out of habit, vaguely remembering that Izumi and Mizutani seemed to be - something? romantic? of some sort, the kind that involved dates and lost cabbages.

“Likewise,” Fumiki - ah, no, Mizutani - said, voice cheerful and bright. He looked like he was going to continue, but Izumi interrupted him before he could continue with the pleasantries.

“Well, you always come here for a different reason, so spit it out. What’s on your mind, Abe?” Izumi said, leaning against the bannister of the staircase and, Abe noticed, sporting some serious bedhead.

“Cloud witch,” he answered. “Where can I find them?”

“Cloud witch?” Mizutani said, scowling and looking at Abe carefully. “There’s no cloud witch.”

“How do I make the clouds go away then?!” Abe said, annoyance slipping into his veins at the very _thought_ that he might have almost died for nothing.

“Hmm,” Izumi said, tapping a finger on the metal railing. “Maybe what you need isn’t the cloud witch, but the sun witch.” Mizutani made an approving sound, perking up. “You’re trying to make the sun shine again, right?”

“Oh, yeah, Sakaeguchi!” Mizutani said, and Izumi nodded, looking at Abe with a level stare. “Mmm, if he’s messed up, the sun won’t shine, which is probably why the clouds didn’t go away even after Nishihiro cheered up.” Mizutani popped the ‘p’ in his last word, shooting Abe a brilliant grin and a thumbs up. “Good job, by the way. That was super fast!”

“Huh, yeah,” Abe agreed. “So where can I find this Sakaeguchi?”

“You can ask Mihashi,” Mizutani said, draping himself over the railing lazily. “They’re really good friends, so Mihashi’d know where to find him better than anyone.”

Abe glanced at Izumi, who jerked a thumb over his shoulder. “You heard the man, Abe. Your chickadee-wielding neighbor holds the next key to your quest, should you choose to accept it.”

Abe grimaced at Izumi’s continuing fits of lameness, then leveled a glance over at Mizutani. “So, you’re a witch too, right? What’s your problem? Can I go ahead and take care of it since I came all this way?”

“Yeah, I’m a witch, but you can’t fix me,” Mizutani said, stretching his arms open and smiling. “If nothing grows, nothing dies. You can’t have an end unless there’s something there to begin, ya know?”

 _Death witch_ , Abe mentally noted, running his tongue along the back of his teeth. Made sense for him to be with the time witch, he supposed. Izumi jabbed Mizutani in the side, causing him to fold over with a protested gasp of his name. “Anyway. Let me give you a ride home, man. You can stick your bike in the back of my truck. It’s not safe to be out in the dark right now.”

Abe remembered the intense fear that had so suddenly swamped him just outside the door, emanating threateningly from the forest trees. He hadn’t seen anything, hadn’t heard any rustling, but something about them had been ominous. Whether it was knowing the danger or his proximity to witches attracting it to him, he wasn’t sure; regardless, he didn’t need Izumi’s warnings to let him know he shouldn’t be out on his own after dark, especially not when there were so many trees nearby.

“Yeah, sounds good,” Abe said, running a hand through his hair. Live to fight another day and all that. “Let’s go.”

\----------

The drive back to Abe’s house had been shorter than he’d expected, and he was able to wake up the next morning not too much later than usual without feeling like he’d lost out on sleep. A second cup of coffee bolstered the fire in his belly, which was only infuriating when he remembered he couldn’t go _get_ Mihashi out of the forest. He’d have to wait for Mihashi to come to _him_ , which could be _days_ from now.

Abe got suited up to go poke around in his yard, exchanging his boxers and cotton tee shirt for the jeans with a tear approaching his ass region and an old band shirt his brother had gag gifted him back in high school. He plucked his old boots up from the laundry room, not even bothering to flick off the dried mud from the sole since it would only get caked back on twice as thick when he walked outside for sure.

Opening the door, Abe walked out into his garden and inhaled the smell of wet dirt and the foliage of the trees. He looked up to check his vegetables, only to see none other than Mihashi sitting on the stone wall surrounding his yard, looking sadly at an overturned tomato cage.

“Mihashi!” he called out, getting the blond’s attention. He started walking over, feet sticking heavily in the mud and bringing a bit of a burn to the muscles he’d worked yard in his legs yesterday biking up to the observatory. He glared down at the dirt, mucking his way over to where Mihashi was staring at him wide-eyed and swaying his feet back and forth.

“Abe-kun!” Mihashi chirped in response as soon as Abe was close enough, a small smile perched on his face before it fell. “Your tomato cage fell again.”

“Yeah, I see that,” Abe said, kicking the metal so that it rolled awkwardly down the sad excuse of a path in a curve. “So, Sakaeguchi. We’re gonna go take care of him today.”

At that, Mihashi got a truly astounding mix of expressions somehow all on his face at the same time. He looked - excited and relieved, mostly, but he was doing that little wiggle he always got when he was anxious about something. Abe exhaled sharply, head falling to his chest in despair that things would never be easy with this guy. “Okay, what’s wrong?”

“Wh-what?” Mihashi asked, and Abe looked up, feeling the frown mar his face.

“I’m asking what’s wrong! You’re happy because Sakaeguchi is your friend, right? So what’s the problem, huh?!”

Mihashi winced at that, his fingers curling together in complicated knots as he avoided Abe’s gaze. His mouth got lost within the white scarf wrapped around his neck, and the words he muttered got lost in the fabric. His shoulders perked up to his ears as he looked up, eyes darting to Abe’s once, then again.

“Huh?!” Abe repeated, leaning in closer. Mihashi jolted, eyes screwing shut as his fingers clutched the knees of his pants and he spat out the words.

“I said I - I can’t leave the forest anymore!”

Abe stood still, stunned. He looked to Mihashi, really _looked_ this time. Mihashi - Mihashi looked _miserable_ ; his skin had gotten pale, dark bags beginning to hang beneath his eyes. His familiar was curled into his hair, snoozing and not even making nasty threatening chirps at Abe. Cold fear curled claws into Abe’s stomach, his hand reaching out to clench in Mihashi’s sweater as he stepped over his garden plot.

“What - what do you mean you can’t leave?” Abe asked, voice dull and distant to his own ears.

Mihashi licked his lips, eyes still not meeting Abe’s. He stared at the tree line behind Abe’s house, voice quiet as he spoke. “It started yesterday, I think,” he said, “when I went to get some more herbs for tea. They’re a little rare, and they grow a little further out than the ones I use normally.”

“Did something happen?” Abe asked, heart beating fast in his chest with an unnamed fear he didn’t quite understand. “Mihashi?!”

Mihashi shook his head rapidly, finally meeting Abe’s eyes. “Not - ! Nothing happened, I just...” His shoulders drooped, and just like that, he looked - tired, more than anything else. “I barely made it back home. I slept all day, and when I woke up this morning I was still - ” Mihashi cut himself sharply, and Abe was close enough to register that Mihashi was holding his breath, maybe even biting his tongue.

“Why did you come here, then? You should be resting, idiot!” Abe said, fingers clenching even more tightly in the chickadee on Mihashi’s chest. The fabric pulled, distorted the image until it wouldn’t be recognized as the bird still snoozing in Mihashi’s hair.

“I - I wanted - !” Mihashi started, hands reaching up to grab at Abe’s wrist. The grip was still tight, tighter than Abe expected, and it caused his own to still from where he hadn’t even realized he was shaking. “It was okay - coming here, that is, it was okay, I’m not - I’m not too tired to come here! Because - because the garden is - because you’re - ”

“My garden?” Abe asked, loosening his grip a bit. Mihashi’s hands remained where they were, though, and he made no move to hint for him to do otherwise. Mihashi’s hands were warm on his skin, calloused in odd places. He thought to glance down at them, hold one in his own and study it, but Mihashi’s eyes were locked with his own and he wasn’t sure he could look away if he even wanted to.

“Y-Yeah, it’s... I don’t really know why, but I feel better when I’m here,” Mihashi murmured. He then glanced over at the fallen tomato cage, and a hiccupy laugh passed Mihashi’s face. “Even if it’s the worst garden I’ve ever seen.”

“Hey! It’s my first garden! It’s allowed to be a little rough around the edges!” Abe said, though he put no heat behind it. Instead, he let his fingers relax from the fist in Mihashi’s sweater, watched his hand as it bloomed into a palm lying flat on Mihashi’s chest. He pressed just a little, felt a quiet awe when he realized he could feel Mihashi’s heartbeat through the softness of fabric. He closed his eyes, let a moment pass where he stood still, Mihashi’s hands wrapped calmingly around his wrist and Mihashi’s heartbeat soothing the worry that was still just barely beneath the surface of his gut. He thought, then, about asking Mihashi about the cilantro, but - but something stopped him, some greatness that closed his throat and made it hard to swallow.

“Hey,” he said instead, opening his eyes and staring at his open palm before dragging his eyes up to meet Mihashi’s. They were so hazel, so soft and warm and open, and he felt the twitch of his hand just a bit when their gazes met, somehow reminiscent of the tender privateness he’d seen between Mizutani and Izumi the night before. “If I help Sakaeguchi - you’ll feel better, right? Because another witch will be fixed, so nature will be closer to being normal. You’ll feel better, right?”

“Maybe?” Mihashi said, voice quiet but easy for Abe to hear with how close they were standing. Abe realized, suddenly, that he could smell the herbs on Mihashi’s skin where he’d been picking them, and his skin itched and felt too small to hold him. He could also just barely make out the soft _prrr prrrr prrrr_ of Mihashi’s familiar’s snores, so faint they hardly existed. “I don’t - we don’t know what’s wrong. I’m - ” Mihashi swallowed thickly, eyes growing wide and becoming just a little wet. It was like a punch to Abe’s gut, seeing the proof of fear on Mihashi’s face, and every muscle in his body protested to _move do something fix it fix it fix it_ _now._ Mihashi hadn’t said it, but Abe knew the sentence that had been on the tip of his tongue: _I’m scared._

 _“_ I’m gonna fix it,” Abe promised, his free hand reaching up to cup the back of Mihashi’s neck. He squeezed, just enough for Mihashi to _know_. _“_ Where can I find Sakaeguchi?”

 _Please not the forest_ , Abe thought, and Mihashi sighed gently, eyes falling shut as he relaxed ever so slightly into the hold Abe had on him. “Probably - probably the graveyard,” Mihashi said. “When you go to the general store, turn right. It’s just on the outskirt of town, past the old church that looks like it’s about to fall down.”

“Okay,” Abe said, squeezing once more before he let his hand slide down to Mihashi’s shoulder to push. “Go home and get some rest. No herb gathering for now.”

“But - it’s for - ”

“No buts!” Abe interrupted, pushing just a little harder. “You look like hell. Go rest and I’ll see you tomorrow, okay?”

Mihashi looked like he was going to protest further, but with a third push, he slid off the stone wall and started walking towards the forest. Abe watched, and sure enough, Mihashi paused at the tree line to look over his shoulder and lock their gazes together one last time. Abe crossed his arms, standing still and determined, and Mihashi’s face softened into something a little gentler. It had Abe’s stomach churning again, but in a different way that was just as uncomfortable but not unpleasant.

As soon as Mihashi was gone from view, Abe turned around and entered his house again. He stripped out of his gardening clothes and pulled on something acceptable to be seen in, then hopped on his bike. He pedaled down the dirt road into town, to the general store, then to the right. He passed by what looked like a cute little bakery next door to a coffee shop, past a dress shop and a jewelry store and what looked like some kind of ancient hand-me-down bookstore. The sidewalks were filled with people dying to get out after the cessation of endless torrents, completely unaware that only one piece of nature wasn’t just completely broken beyond belief.

Finally, Abe got out of the town limits and crossed over a piece of the river, the old, beautiful bridge taking his attention for only a brief second before he was back to looking for a church. The trees gave way to fields, expansive and filled with what would probably be beautiful jade grass swaying in the wind when it wasn’t half-dead and pathetic.

Then, just on the horizon, Abe saw what looked like a run-down cobblestone building. He biked just a little faster, pulling up a gravel drive and coming to a stop in front of the unpainted doors. He peered inside, and there were a few old pews pushed to the side of a small chapel, windows boarded up and the candle chandelier covered in so many cobwebs it was almost impossible to see. Definitely the church, then.

Abe turned around and locked his bike up, then started walking around the old church. Just as Mihashi had said, there was a hill there with graves running up on either side of a staircase, and squinting through the sunlight, Abe saw someone standing on one of the upper tiers. He raised a hand to shield his view, then huffed and started ascending toward them.

When he got closer, Abe saw a young man about his age standing in front of a grave, short cinnamon hair and a sweet face matching small hands pressed together and head bowed in prayer. Abe glanced at the grave, but the name on it wasn’t Sakaeguchi. He stood still for a second, wondering if he should ask just in case or risk looking like an idiot to someone who had no idea what a witch was.

“Can I help you?” Abe looked up and realized that while he’d been debating, the person in front of him glancing at him curiously.

“Uh, are you Sakaeguchi?” Abe asked, and the young man’s eyes widened, looking surprised.

“Yeah, that’s me,” he said. Abe exhaled in relief. That was easier than he’d expected. “How’d you know that, though?”

“Izumi dragged me into it, but I’m helping you witches get fixed so nature can go back to normal, since my garden really sucks and it’s all your fault. Also Mihashi looks like garbage, so if you could tell me what’s wrong so I can help, that would be awesome.” Abe looked to Sakaeguchi, and the last thing he expected was a fit of laughter, but that was exactly what he got. His mouth soured. “Don’t tell me I can’t fix you yet, because if I hear that one more time - ”

“Oh, oh no, that’s not why I’m laughing,” Sakaeguchi said, flapping a hand. “It’s just - it’s been a very long time since I met someone quite as, ah, forward as you are.” Sakaeguchi visibly gathered himself, then smiled sadly. “As for what’s wrong, that’s pretty easy.” He turned towards the grave he had been praying at before, and rested a reverent hand on the stone. “My mother just passed away, and... I just really miss her, is all.”

Intense annoyance and bitter empathy warred tightly in Abe’s chest. “I... can’t fix that,” he said. More laughter was the last of his expectations, but Sakaeguchi seemed quite determined to betray all of those.

“Oh, I know. There’s nothing to fix, really. Ah, what did you say your name was?” Abe introduced himself, and Sakaeguchi nodded. “I’m Sakaeguchi Yuuto, nice to meet you. Anyway, I’m actually going to be late for work if I don’t get going, but if you’re friends with Mihashi, I’ll be able to find you pretty easily. Have a good day, Abe-san!”

Before Abe could do anything more than wonder what the hell had just happened, Sakaeguchi waved brightly and disappeared down the stone steps, legs carrying him swiftly towards a black car Abe hadn’t even noticed in the parking lot. He watched Sakaeguchi get into his car, sit in the driver’s seat for a beat, then start and drive off back towards town.

“Oh man, he’s as tough as ever,” came a sudden voice behind Abe, bringing him to jolt into the air and whip around. Izumi’s bland face met him, leaning against one of the graves as he popped a lazy bubble of gum.

“What - how the _hell_ did you - ?!” Abe started, stupefied. Izumi’s response was a quick shrug. “No, you told me to ask Mihashi, but you _knew - ”_

 _“_ You needed to see him,” Izumi said, glancing down at his hand and picking at his cuticles. “I told you about him, a few times, but you never really get it until you see him. Then boom, you manage to do what you need to do.” Izumi looked up at him and grinned. “Just like magic.”

“You’re a fucking asshole, you know that?” Abe grunted, and Izumi huffed out, pushing off of the gravestone and taking a few steps past Abe towards the staircase.

“Yeah, that happens when you’ve seen some of the things I’ve seen. Makes it harder to be patient and let things happen at their own pace, y’know? Only so many times I can see my friends die before I see it too many times.”

Abe swallowed, watching the soft curve of Izumi’s spine despite the harshness of the words coming out of his mouth. At the base of his neck, the black circle poked above his shirt collar, just a hint of the mark Abe now knew was trailing down his spine, and when he turned his head, the single cuff caught the sunlight and glittered brightly for just a moment. “How the hell am I supposed to fix him?” Abe asked him, and Izumi shook his head, blowing another bubble.

“You don’t,” he said as soon as the bubble popped, eyes staring into town before sliding over to Abe’s. “There’s nothing to fix there, not really. Just healing that needs to happen. Oh, but don’t worry,” Izumi said with a slow smile just as Abe felt the curl of frustration piling at the base of his neck, “you never have trouble with Sakaeguchi. Y’all are always good buddies in no time.”

“...What happened? To his mother, I mean,” Abe asked. Knowing would help, he figured.

“Eh, same thing that always happens,” Izumi sighed, a third bubble making its way to his lips. “He always gets like this when one dies.”

Abe jerked his head to Izumi, expecting some kind of a sarcastic hint of a joke there, but there was absolutely nothing but an expression of fact. “You wanna tell me what you mean by that or are you going to pull the enigmatic asshole card as per?”

Izumi glanced to Abe once, blue eyes cautious, and then he sighed, sticking his tongue out through the gum and giving Abe a glance of the silver barbell running through it. “Time is weird everywhere,” he said suddenly, but Abe remained silent in case it wasn’t the non sequitur it seemed to be. “Between me and Oki, time and space - shit gets weird fast. But here - _here_ it’s _weird._ ”

“Weird... how?” Abe prompted, and Izumi reached up to play with his bangs as he spoke.

“If I had to explain it, it’s like... time gets imprinted on, here. It’s like Nishiura is an event horizon, where everything gets stuck and nothing can escape its reach.” Izumi then looked to Abe straight on, face completely serious. “You were never here, before. How many times I’ve hopped back, looking for something, anything - you were never here. But one day, one day you were.”

Izumi looked away from Abe then, towards the forest just visible beyond the fields of Nishiura’s outskirts. “I didn’t recognize you the first few times. You were just another face. But when I shifted time, you showed up. Then again. Then again. Then again. Every single time I changed, you were always there.”

“What the hell are you saying?” Abe said, chills running down his spine and causing the hairs on his arms to stand up straight.

“I mean, Nishiura traps you here. Once you visit it once, in any timeline - you’re stuck. You can’t escape, you can’t leave, no matter if I reset the timeline, no matter if you die, nothing. I noticed it with you, first, but after I started paying attention, I saw what was happening. Anyone that comes here will _always_ come here, and they’ll always - ” Izumi cut himself off short, his easy body language tightening just enough for Abe to feel the tension screaming in the air. It was gone as quickly as it came, though, as Izumi let out a soft breath and blew another bubble. “Anyway, time has a memory, too. Sakaeguchi always looks for someone to be his mother figure to replace the one he lost. That mother figure always dies. It’s always the same.” The bubble popped. “Sad. This last one was pretty close to his real mother, too.”

 _Mother_. Terror screamed through Abe’s body at the weight of Izumi’s words - he’d always be stuck in Nishiura, and his family - oh god, was his family stuck too? They hadn’t come to Nishiura, Shun at university and both his parents out of town when he’d moved - but maybe there was already a timeline where - ?

“My parents,” he managed to choke out, and Izumi glanced at him curiously. “My brother - They haven’t come, not yet. Are - Are they - ?”

Izumi hummed thoughtfully. “I’ve never seen them, so they’re probably safe. I started paying close attention to you after I realized that you always had an affinity with Mihashi, so I would have noticed your family. You had a girlfriend, once, but you didn’t seem that into her and she was cheating on you with the greasy bagger at the grocery store.”

Abe felt queasy, suddenly, and he sank down to the ground, sitting down and tucking his face between his knees. “I can’t... I can’t handle this,” he said, fingers tight on his calves. Unnamed danger - some evil forest, a poisoned swamp, death around every corner avoided only by a witch giving him vague hints - “I can’t. They can’t come. I can’t let them come here.”

Izumi said nothing, just stood still and gave Abe a moment to remember how to breathe steadily. Abe took it, closing his eyes and trying to push past the dizziness and the terror of Shun taking a left turn and somehow not falling into a spontaneous field of cilantro, of his mother forgetting the right shoes and falling into a ditch, his dad falling to whatever nameless horror the forest had promised him last night at the observatory - he couldn’t let it happen. He had to keep them away. He had to protect them.

“I... if I fix it... If I fix all of you... will it go away?” he asked, lifting his head and looking to Izumi. He was met only with Izumi’s profile, melancholy and distant on the town sprawled beneath them.

“This time, I hope we’ll find out.”

 

 


	5. something cool

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [hacks own account to post a new chapter] i'm in
> 
> hey, so, y'all heard of this cool manga called oofuri

 

 

Abe opened his eyes the next morning to gray skies and a rock of anxiety in his stomach. He stared at his ceiling, tossed onto his side to stare blankly out the window, then again to the other side to grip the sheet in a tight fist and fight the urge to crawl under them forever. His body told him that it was early, disgustingly early considering how much he’d tossed and turned in the night. 

After a moment of wallowing, Abe swallowed past the metallic fear in his mouth and forced himself into a sitting position. The sheets pooled at his waist, wrinkled from being pulled throughout a restless night, and he tore them away to stand and tug them off the bed. He wadded them up in a ball and tossed them in the corner to wash later, then walked into the kitchen to make some coffee. 

The first sip was too hot, so he kept it below his nose to see if he could sniff some wakefulness into his system instead. His shoulder leaned against the doorway, and he stared out over his garden through the window over the sink with a lazy gaze. His tomato cages were all miserably crooked, one still sitting on the path from where he’d neglected to put it back into place. His basil was soggy, the dirt around his bell peppers had oozed out of the neat pile he’d started with, and he was pretty sure falling onto his rosemary would be a prickly one-way ticket to Izumi’s next timeline. 

Abe finished his cup of coffee, standing there taking stock of his garden and the slow lightning of the gray sky to a brighter shade of the same. Sakaeguchi was definitely the witch that was obvious to go next, considering the miserable face of the sky, but there was definitely no way Abe could do anything about him anytime soon. Izumi and Mizutani both had turned him down, too, and Mihashi - Mihashi needed _rest_. His harried appearance flashed as Abe closed his eyes, causing him to open them again to look out his window again. 

With a sigh, Abe pushed off the door frame and put his coffee cup in the sink to wash later, then walked into his bedroom to get dressed. It’d be worthless to ask Izumi for any help - the bastard would be just as likely to give Abe some sort of half-assed, vague answer and make the trip past all that corn absolutely worthless. Mihashi was at home in the labyrinthian forest from hell, even if Abe had wanted to disturb his rest to ask.

He’d have to figure out the rest of the witches on his own, then.

Abe left his home to grab his bike, kicking the stand up with a clank and easing himself onto the dirt road. The whole area around his home still smelled rich and earthy from the apocalyptic rain, a light fog hovering around the grass and hiding its condition from view. The forest felt even more mysterious in the early morning than it usually did, the spaces between the trees somehow both foreboding and enticing. Abe ignored whatever magical pull the traps were trying to ensnare him with and instead kept turning the pedals towards town, eyes focusing instead on keeping his ass out of the potholes that still hadn’t been fixed yet.

His first thought was to go to Shinooka, considering she’d been the one to help Abe figure out what to plant and she was the one to tell Abe about the witches in the first place. He pulled to a stop in front of the general store, only to huff out in annoyance when he saw the red signed marked CLOSED on the front door. He glanced at the hours sign posted next to it, then pulled out his phone and checked the time. He was a good two hours earlier than the opening - definitely not going to work. 

“Damn it,” he grumbled, slipping his phone back into his pocket as he leaned onto the handlebars of his bike and glanced around. Nishiura was quiet this time of morning, still early enough that people weren’t quite out and about yet, but late enough that the sun had risen and was lighting up the town as much as it could through the dreary clouds.

A blue road sign caught his attention, directing people towards the central town square. Curious since Nishiura had several squares and wondering exactly made this one more important than the others, Abe pushed off the ground and biked towards that direction. It was only a few blocks down the road, and it was pretty much the same as the others; a lawn of green grass, a few pathways through it, a statue here and there - benches, lights, nothing of use. 

His sour mood perked up, however, when Abe’s gaze fell to the other side of the central square and he saw a large brick building that looked like it was probably original to the town itself. There were several cars parked in front of it and a few bikes, and in front of it was a sign that informed him he was looking at NISHIURA TOWN LIBRARY.

“Perfect,” he grinned, biking through the square to get across as quickly as possible. He slid off his bike and tucked it into the rack, locking it up and taking the front steps two at a time. The lights were all on inside, and there were a few people sitting at tables, a librarian working on checking a huge stack of books in, and rows and rows and rows of books. 

Abe stepped inside, eyes searching for the non-fiction section. He spotted it towards the back, and he made his way over, shoes making no sound on the industrial gray carpet. He slowed down when he got to the non-fiction, keeping his eyes peeled for gardening books. He stopped when he saw the section he needed, turning into the aisle and glancing at the various titles. _Tomatoes For Dummies, Keeping Your Hydrangeas Beautiful, Veggies And You: Grow Your Weight And Lose It!…_ There were all kinds of miscellaneous books that maybe, could have been possibly helpful. He pushed past them, trying to find something a little more general, then grabbed as many as his arms could hold. 

He hefted his load over to one of the tables closest to the non-fiction section, and he stared down at the pile of books to try and decide which book to look at first. Then, he had a rogue thought, eyes glancing back over to the shelves as a thought struck him. He went back, skipping the garden section, and instead looking for books on magic and paranormal stuff. 

When he finally found what maybe could be construed as a section to hold books on witches, Abe deflated slightly at the lack of content. They were mostly junk titles - obviously not about witches, and almost certainly not _real_ \- but he did find one titled _Everyday Magic_ that, well, maybe… possibly… probably not but _maybe_ had something he needed. 

Abe brought the book back with him, putting it to the side as he took the seat and snagged a few pieces of paper from the middle of the table and a pen. He ignored the books for a moment, instead deciding to write down a list of everything he knew up to that point, and what he _needed_ to know. Less time digging through pointless information, or something.

_Nine witches for nine qualities needed in nature,_ Abe wrote down, with a numbered list beneath it, one through nine. _Mihashi - plants, Nishihiro - rain, Izumi - time, Mizutani - death, Sakaeguchi - sun_. He then closed his eyes, trying to remember if he’d heard any other names or qualities being mentioned. Something that started with an ‘O’… Oki? He wrote it down in slot six ( _Oki?_ ), then lightly tapped his pen against his jawline as he stared down at the remaining three slots. He was pretty sure he’d heard names for them before, in passing, but hell if he could remember them. 

Sighing, Abe decided instead to attack the list from the other perspective: the nature qualities. Rain was obvious, but of course he already knew that one; sun was another obvious-but-already-known quality. Time to grow and a time to die were apparently needed, as was the actual plant itself, judging from the witches Abe already knew. 

_Food?_ Abe wrote after he flipped through a few of the books in front of him. Plants needed to be fertilized every so often, apparently, depending on the plant. He’d never really considered that before, having made his way through life so far just knowing that plants were watered or they died. Still, not all plants needed fertilizer, and the ones that did needed to have different _kinds_ of fertilizer at different _times_ during the year. Jesus. How anyone remembered all of this was _wild_. 

“Working on a garden?” a voice said suddenly, drawing Abe out of his deep thought. Abe glanced up to see the librarian standing next to the table, a friendly smile on his face and arms filled with books. 

“Uh, yeah, something like that,” Abe said, glancing at how he had about four different gardening books open around him. “I just moved here a few months ago from the city, so all of this is pretty new to me.”

“Haha, yeah, I know what you mean,” the librarian said, turning and putting the books in his arms on a cart at the end of one of the aisles. “I fancy myself a pretty good gardener if I do say so, but when I first started back in the day, I had no idea what I was getting into. There’s a lot to keep straight for each plant.”

“I’ll say,” Abe groaned, holding up a farmer’s almanac with disdain. “How anyone keeps up with this stuff is beyond me.”

“Well, don’t worry about it. A lot of gardening is just getting your hands and clothes dirty to figure out what works in your soil and what doesn’t, though you’re a step ahead of the rest by sitting down first to learn what you need. Makes you have to get a little _less_ dirty.” 

Abe glanced up at the librarian, running a thumb over his pen before he plastered on a friendly smile he hoped didn’t look as fake as it felt. “You said you’re a gardener, right? What would you say would be a list of things I’d have to have in order to have a good garden?”

The librarian hummed thoughtfully, crossing his arms. “Well, gosh, there’s lots of things.”

“Say… the top _nine_ things.” 

Immediately, the librarian stilled, blinking at Abe with an expression somewhere between bewildered and incredulous. It was hardly the reaction Abe expected, causing him to pause as well. “What… What an arbitrary number,” the librarian said, tone as delicate and careful as lamb’s ear to Abe’s ears. “May I ask… why you chose that number in particular?”

Something in Abe’s gut pulled at the expression now on the librarian’s face, some kind of push that had him taking a bit of a leap away from bullshitting the librarian with a backpedalled answer and into giving it a shot. He crossed his fingers and went for it. “I’m not sure you’d believe me if I told you,” he said, and when the librarian seemed anything but surprised, Abe felt a clinch of victory.

“Try me,” he said without a pause, and Abe felt a flicker of hope in his gut. 

“Well, I’ve got this hunch, based off this crazy story I heard,” Abe said, eyes not moving a centimeter away from the librarian’s face to drink in every micro reaction this guy tried to hide. “I figure there’s nine things nature needs in order to work, and each one has a witch in charge of making sure they don’t mess up. Except that didn’t work, and they’re all messed up, and someone needs to put things straight before they get worse.”

The librarian looked positively stunned, slowly sinking into the chair across from Abe. When he spoke, his voice was hushed. “How do you know that?”

“Izumi told me,” Abe said, “and Mihashi made me believe it.”

“You - You know Izumi and - Ah, of course, you must be the one who helped Nishihiro, then,” the librarian said. He seemed to exhale slightly, arms folding on the table as he glanced down in thought before looking back up. “I’m Oki Kazutoshi, the space witch. You must be the one Izumi’s been looking for all this time, then.”

Abe glanced down at his list, scribbling out the question mark next to where he’d written Oki’s name and filling in the word _space_ next to it. “Space witch? How is that important?” he asked, and Oki tilted his head curiously.

“Plants can’t grow if they don’t have space to grow,” he answered.

“Ah, of course,” Abe answered, feeling the frown on his face. It was - well, _obvious_ , but also kind of felt like cheating it was _so_ obvious. He huffed out a breath. “Is there a _permission_ witch for plants to have _permission_ to grow?” he asked sarcastically.

“Sort of?” Oki answered, causing Abe’s jaw to drop open. _Bullshit._ “I guess Hanai could be considered that, though his title is the authority witch and we call it the ‘right to grow’. You wouldn’t be able to tell the difference between a weed and something you planted if you couldn’t decide which had the authority to be in your garden, right?”

“You people are _really_ pushing it,” Abe mumbled as he filled in _Hanai - authority_ in his checklist. The name sparked something in his memory, and he stared down at it until it clicked. “This guy is missing.”

Oki sighed. “Yeah. Poor Tajima’s been looking for him for weeks.” Another name Abe recognized. He filled it in, then looked at Oki with a raised eyebrow. “Ah, Tajima is the soul witch. He manages the animals in the gardens. Bees, snails, moles, that kind of thing.”

Abe nodded, filling in the information and noting that he was now only missing one name. He turned his paper around and slid it towards Oki, dropping the pen on top so Oki could grab it. “Mind doing me a favor and checking my work?”

“Suyama,” Oki said after a second, grabbing the pen and filling in the last witch’s name.“He’s the nourishment witch. And technically, Mihashi’s the nature witch, Izumi is the moon witch, and Mizutani the black witch. Not that the titles are particularly important, I suppose.”

“You never know,” Abe said, taking the paper back and glancing down. Oki had really amazingly good handwriting, Suyama’s name standing out amongst Abe’s comparative chicken scratch to Oki’s pretty strokes. He looked to where Oki had written in the proper titles of each witch next to their names, his eyes lingering next to Mihashi’s for a moment. He had a second where his thoughts turned to his neighbor, wondering how he was doing, if he was still sleeping or, god forbid, out trying to collect herbs to make tea. Then, another memory clicked into place. “Oh, Mihashi said you could make me an amulet that would let me travel into the forest without him. That sound about right?”

“Yes… and no,” Oki said, opening his folded hands to look at them. “I mean, I have that ability, but at the moment, I’m afraid - ”

“ - your magic isn’t working,” Abe interrupted, and Oki gulped, nodding. Abe groaned, propping his head up on his hand with a heavy glower at the paper in front of him. He then looked up at Oki, wondering if he should even to bother holding his breath. “And? Are you going to tell me I can’t help you yet because it isn’t time?”

“Ah, well,” Oki said, his face going brilliantly, stunningly scarlet red. “I’m… not really sure you could, but perhaps? Maybe? You could?”

Abe scowled at Oki, about ready to open his mouth to pester him for being so annoyingly coy about whatever his problem was, when he heard someone whisper his name loudly. 

“Abe-san!” Abe looked away from Oki to see Shinooka walking up, a few romance novels in her arms mixed in with a book on putting in a koi pond. “I see you found the library! Working on your garden?”

“Huh, yeah,” Abe said, glancing down at the gardening books surrounding him. And well, it sort of wasn’t a lie, right? He was working on his garden by interrogating Oki about the witches, right? He looked up at her, waiting for her to continue speaking or leave, watching, baffled, when she started to wiggle anxiously.

“I’m working on my yard, myself,” she said, holding up the book on koi ponds. “I’m thinking about getting into aquaponics to try and have healthier plants, since we’re having all this trouble lately.”

“That’s… cool,” Abe said, looking at Oki. He wasn’t particularly interested in Shinooka’s yard, wanting instead to get back to grilling Oki so he could get this damn jewel and check on Mihashi - only to see Oki sitting spine-straight, eyes wide and locked on Shinooka with a face even redder, somehow, than before. Boggling. 

“Chiyo-chan, come on or we’ll miss the movie!” another young woman said, her long hair swishing over her shoulder as she snatched at Shinooka’s arm. She made brief eye contact with Abe, then did a double take and got a devilish look on her face towards Shinooka. “Oh, I mean, unless you’d rather stay here and talk about gardens and stuff?”

_God no,_ Abe grimaced at the same time that Shinooka flushed bright red and went stick-straight herself. “N-No, movie!” she said, shooting Abe one last flash of a smile as she waved and turned to follow her friends. “I’ll see you around, Abe-san! Let me know if you need any help with the stuff you planted!” 

“Yeah, sure,” Abe said, heaving a sigh of relief when she left. He turned back to Oki, ready to get back into his discussion about what his problem was, only to stare when he saw Oki gaping widely at him. “What?”

“You… know Shinooka-chan?” he asked, and Abe shrugged one shoulder.

“Not really? I bought some plants from the general store.”

Oki’s face flattened, and a breath escaped his mouth. “Man, you don’t even have a clue, do you?” he asked. Before Abe could ask what the hell _that_ was supposed to mean, he shook his head and started twirling his fingers together. “Well, that answers your question of whether you can help me or not, then.”

“Huh?!” Abe said, about to protest when Oki shot him a determined look.

“I - ! I want to ask Shinooka-chan out on a date!” he stage whispered, expression fiery as he clenched a fist.

Abe was officially lost. “…She was just here?”

“You - ! I - I can’t just _ask_ her in front of someone!” Oki protested, his ears pinking at the tips. “I don’t want her to feel pressured to accept just because she’s scared of letting me down in front of other people! She’s nice like that, you know! But - ” At this, Oki groaned, bringing his hands up to smother the noise into his palms. “I can’t ever catch her alone. She’s always with her friends, and I don’t have her number or anything, and it would be _weird_ to ask her talk to her by herself when she’s with other people.”

Abe felt a tic in his jaw. He did _not_ sign up for _this_. “I’m. Not really sure what your problem is.”

“Oh my god,” Oki groaned again, his face visibly red even from behind his hands. He parted his fingers so he could glare at Abe. “I’m - really not good with crowds, okay! But - but she talks to _you_ , right? So - ”

“…So…?”

“ _So_ , you could - _talk_ to her. _For_ me,” Oki finished.

Abe couldn’t help the contorted expression he could _feel_ on his face, it was so thick. “You want _me_ to ask your crush out on a date?”

There was a silence in the air between them, heavy even for a library, until Oki pointed his hands to Abe from where he was still resting his head on his hands. “Okay, you pose an _excellent_ counterargument.”

“Seriously, I don’t - just _talk_ to her?” Abe said again. He _really_ didn’t see what the big deal was.

“Oh right. And you’re going to just walk up to your crush and ask them out?” Oki said.

“I don’t have a crush on anyone,” he said, though as soon as he did, a sense of _wrong wrong wrong_ filtered through his gut as golden eyes flashed on the back of his eyelids. He couldn’t help but frown at that, covering his mouth with one hand as he stared down at the table and wondered where the hell _that_ had come from. Like, _sure_ , he’d had that - that weird… _moment_ in Nishihiro’s house, when he’d all the sudden gotten turned on by Mihashi, and Izumi himself had said that he and Mihashi had - how did he put it - something _cool_. But that - that wasn’t something like a _crush_ … right?

“Judging from the array of expressions you just had on your face, I’m going to guess you just had a revelation,” Oki said, and Abe shot him a dirty look.

“I don’t have a _crush_ on him,” Abe snapped, and that - well, that much didn’t make his stomach sink into a feeling of black wrongness. He - he had _something_ , maybe, but. Crush definitely wasn’t the right word for it. Whatever “ _it”_ was.

“Right. So are you going to go up to this guy and tell him you like him?” Oki asked. Abe felt his cheeks flare hot at just the thought, instantaneous fire rushing beneath his skin at the very _thought_ of saying something like that to Mihashi. It was - _absurd!_

_“Hell_ no!” Abe retorted, glaring when an older woman at a table down the room shushed him nastily. He looked back to Oki, then wiggled in his seat. So… if Oki was having this same visceral reaction to Shinooka, he supposed… maybe he could understand not wanting to go up to her and blurt it out, though it sure did seem a lot easier. 

“Get it now?” Oki asked, pouting, and Abe groaned, rubbing at his forehead with the heel of his hand.

“So, if I can - what - ask Shinooka to talk to you one on one, you can tell her how you feel and then boom, problem fixed? You’ll be able to get me an amulet to go into the forest _and_ you’ll be all better?”

Oki sighed sadly, picking at the corner of one of the books mindlessly. “When I noticed my powers fading, I thought about what could possibly be causing them. It was around then that I started noticing Shinooka-chan coming to the library a lot to help her friend study, and I always felt like - if I could just… get over this fear I have of talking to her, if I could just - man up and tell her - everything would be better.” He then shrugged, looking to Abe with a serious expression. “It might be something deeper, though. Having romantic feelings for someone makes you fixate on them, after all, and the thought of those feelings being reciprocated makes your dopamine kick in hard. So I can’t guarantee it’ll work.”

“Well, it’s worth a shot,” Abe said, careening his neck around the library to see if he could see Shinooka. When he looked around and saw that while the library had definitely picked up in popularity while he’d been talking to Oki and the day had matured, neither Shinooka nor her friends were to be found. Abe sucked in a breath between his teeth, clenching them in annoyance when he realized they must have left to go to their movie. “Well, you’ll have to wait a few hours, at least. They probably already left for the movie theater, though that works since we know where she’ll be.”

“You’re going to ambush her at the theater?!” Oki hissed, and Abe rolled his eyes, pushing back from the table. 

“I’d like to get your problem fixed sooner rather than later. I’m worried about Mihashi,” Abe said. He scribbled down his phone number on a small piece of paper, handing it to Oki. “Give me a call when you’re through talking to Shinooka so we can talk about the jewel.” He looked up to get a confirmation, and instead, he was met with Oki blinking quizzically at him. Abe stared back, watching as in an instant, Oki’s face cleared, smoothing out as his mouth opened to an O.

“You have a crush on _Mihashi_ ,” Oki said, and Abe plopped back down into the chair, glaring death at Oki.

“I do _not - ”_ he grit through his teeth, once again getting shushed by the older woman. He glared at her once again, then turned back to Oki who still looked as calm as a spring creek. “I do not have a _crush_ on _Mihashi._ ”

“You _do_ ,” Oki gasped, one hand covering his mouth before he frowned. “Wait, why are you worried about him? Did something happen?”

Abe felt himself relax out of his defensive fight-or-flight response, bitterness seeping into its place. “He’s not doing well,” Abe said, “without his magic. He can’t leave the forest, and he said he’s having trouble collecting herbs.”

Oki’s face paled to deathly levels. “Oh, _oh_ , that’s - Does Izumi know?”

“Yeah,” Abe said, and Oki propped his arms up on his elbows, resting his mouth on the backs of his hands as he clenched his eyes shut and he looked more than a little sick.

“We’re running out of time,” Abe managed to hear Oki whisper, and a fear clenched his heart before an inferno lit inside of it.

“No,” he said firmly, pulling Oki’s pallid expression to face him. “Not this time. I’m not going to let it end like this. Other timelines may not have worked, but I’m not those Abe’s. I’m going to fix your problems and save Mihashi. I just need you to get better make me that jewel.”

Oki nodded slowly, and Abe stood once again, grabbing his piece of paper where he and Oki had written down all of the information about the witches, folding it up and sticking it in his walled as he left the library. He unlocked his bike, only to realize with a groan that in his fervor to leave, he had _no_ idea where the movie theater was. Reaching into his pocket, he pulled out his phone, running a quick search for movie theaters in Nishiura. 

Luckily, there was only one, and while it was on the other side of town, Abe figured he had a little bit of time and didn’t need to murder himself getting over there. He was definitely starting to feel the effects of not having anything other than a cup of coffee before he left, so he started biking in the direction of the movie theater, stopping when he saw a cute little bakery on the way. 

After snagging a croissant and a second cup of coffee, Abe remounted his bike and came to a stop a few minutes later outside of what looked like an old fashioned movie theater that only had a few movies going at once. He glanced around and saw a bench not too far off, so he got off his bike and chained it up, then took a seat, pulling out his phone and checking his messages to pass some time.

_Hey sweetie, hope you’re having a good day! House is lonely without you and Shun here. Dad and I are looking to make a trip to Nishiura this weekend. Got that second bedroom set up yet?_ his mom had texted him about an hour ago, and an ice cold clamp vice-gripped his stomach, the same anxiety that had kept him from sleeping once more sweeping through his entire body and almost bringing his breakfast up with it.

_No, sorry_ , _not set up,_ he sent back, teeth sinking into his lower teeth when he saw a moment later that she was typing a response. 

_No problem! You can get it taken care of in a few days, right? ;)_

Another wave of terror washed through him, but before he could think of some way to tell his mother not to come without telling her something along the lines of _if you come you’ll never be able to leave_ _because this place is fucking cursed_ , one of the movies apparently ended as a stream of people started leaving the theater. Abe stood for a better view, eyes darting from face to face as he tried to find Shinooka. It wasn’t too difficult to find her, considering there weren’t _that_ many people at the movies, and when he walked up to her, she looked about as surprised as her friend’s gasp sounded.

“A-Abe-san, what are you - ?” she started, but he interrupted her before she could finish. He thought about giving her a game-winning smile to try and charm her, but the muscles in his face just wouldn’t cooperate. 

“I have a friend who wants to talk to you,” he said, and her confused expression only got even worse.

“Wha - Who?” she asked, tilting her head and glancing at her friend before glaring at her with pink cheeks. “Mia-chan, shh!”

Abe glanced to Shinooka’s friend - Mia? - who pulled a sudden straight face and just smiled serenely at him. He frowned, then glanced back to Shinooka. “His name is Oki. He’s a librarian.”

“Oh, was he the one you were sitting with this morning?” she asked, and Abe mentally clenched his fist. If she noticed him, maybe things would go well? That was how romance worked in all of Shun’s anime, so it had to be real, right? “Did he say what he wanted?”

“To talk to you,” Abe answered, hoping to all that was holy that he hadn’t messed this up for Oki and therefore himself. Shinooka looked about as bamboozled as he’d felt the moment he’d first heard about witches, but she shrugged lightly and turned to Mia with a smile. 

“Well, if he’s still at the library…” she trailed off, looking to Abe, then back to Mia when Abe smiled, “would you mind dropping me back off there? I can meet you at the farmer’s market later?”

“Yeah, sure, no problem,” Mia said, winking once to Abe before pulling Shinooka off towards a car. Shinooka waved to Abe, looking rather stressed, and he exhaled, pulling out his phone and once again glancing down at his messages. Shit… he was going to have to findaway to tell his parents they were not allowed to come to Nishiura without - well - making it _sound_ that way. If his mother in any way thought he was in trouble, she’d be on him so fast - 

_Brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrng!_

“Oh god,” Abe groaned sickly, staring down at a picture of his mother as his phone rang. She was calling; of course she’d call when he didn’t text her right back. He should have said _something_ , god, _anything -_ “Hello?”

“Taka! My goodness, did you throw your phone into a lake after texting me?!” she demanded, before sighing huffily. “Anyway, you know your father and I aren’t too picky, though I can’t believe you don’t even have a futon or two lying around - ”

“Well, y’know, I’ve been so busy,” Abe said, wincing when his mother scoffed clearly in his ear.

“Busy? Sweetheart, you don’t have a _job_ , and as far as I can tell from the pictures you send, all you do is garden and watch baseball. You’re not too busy to put a guest room together.”

“You’d be surprised,” Abe muttered, thinking about how all of this running around for the witches in town was keeping him busy as could be. “Anyway, this weekend just - really isn’t good for me, you see - ”

“Nonsense! We want to see your cute little house and how you’ve put it together!”

“ - just, really _not_ a convenient time - ”

“ - that adorable garden! - ”

“ - not for a _while_ \- ”

“ - like you’re too busy _dating_ or anything - ”

“ - Yep! Yep, that’s it!” Abe interrupted, immediately smacking a hand to his forehead in the middle of the sidewalk at the stunned silence on both ends of the phone. “Too busy dating - haha, how did you know?!” Let death come.

His mother was deathly quiet, and Abe thought for one bright, hopeful moment that maybe the call had disconnected and he’d been spared, only for him to hear a delighted sigh that was wet and obviously masking tears. “Oh, Taka, I’m so happy for you,” his mother said, causing his hope to crumple at his feet. “Your father and I - well - we worried, y’know, you’d never shown _interest_ in - in _anyone_ \- ”

“Yep, one hundred percent interest here,” Abe said, hoping that his mortification was coming across as embarrassment and not as the desire for Izumi Kousuke to come by and pull a Homura. 

“Well, goodness! What’s their name? Come on, talk to me, Taka!”

Abe blurted the first name that came to his mind. “Mihashi,” he said, and then that was it. He crumpled back into the bench in front of the movie theater, officially horrified at himself. “His name is Mihashi. He’s - god, he’s really lame. He likes plants, and - and he makes these teas that make you feel great.” Abe closed his eyes, thinking about what he could tell his mother about Mihashi other than _he’s a plant witch_ , and in the process, felt himself relax into _thinking_ about Mihashi. “He’s got this pet chickadee, too, and he makes fun of my poor garden all the time.”

His mother gave this soft, fond laugh he hadn’t heard in - maybe years? - and the sound caught him at a place under his ribcage and held him there. “Darling, he sounds _wonderful_. Gosh, if you were still in a honeymoon phase and didn’t want us coming over just yet, you could have _said_ so!”

Bitterness welled up suddenly in the back of Abe’s throat, unsure if it was because of the lie he was telling his mother, or if it was because he suddenly thought of what it would be like, if Mihashi had been just a normal neighbor; if the two of them had met under different circumstances, Mihashi making fun of his tomato cages, Abe making fun of his dumb laugh, the two of them able to enjoy the world around them and maybe become a little something special to one another. Mihashi’s tea wouldn’t be magical, but maybe he’d still make it when Abe came in from the rain, hoping to warm him up, wrapping his hands around Abe’s and staring up at him adoringly with bouillon eyes. 

He hated it, suddenly, that he was having to imagine this because of his own cowardice, because he couldn’t think of anything better to say to his mother to save her from the hellhole he’d accidentally found himself in because he’d been caught in a web of a different time. He swallowed around the knot in his throat, half glad and half disgusted that it made him sound torn up with emotion even to his own ears. “Yeah, I’m happy,” he said, closing his eyes to try and drown out the sound of his mother’s delighted cooing. “Anyway, I gotta get going. I’ll, uh, I’ll let you know when it’s a better time for you to come into town.”

“Take your time, sweetie,” his mother said. “I know how magical this time is for you.”

Abe couldn’t help the delirious laugh that escaped out of his mouth. “Yeah. Real magical.”

After he bid his mother goodbye, he slid his phone back into his pocket and stared blankly up at the gray sky hanging above his head. Well, shit.

He sat there for a while, soaking in the absolute what-just-happened of the moment, until his stomach started to growl a bit. He looked around, spotting a café that looked like it might have a halfway decent menu. He walked over, legs filled with lead, and he grabbed what might have been a good sandwich had he not felt like absolute garbage himself. 

Just as he was finished, his phone rang again, and he glanced down in mild horror, only to exhale softly when it wasn’t his mother. He swallowed the bite in his mouth, answering the phone with a slightly muffled, “‘Lo?”

Oki’s voice came through. “Hey! Abe, right?” Abe grunted an affirmative answer, pulling the phone away from his ear to see that it had been maybe an hour since he’d sent Shinooka over towards Oki. He wondered if that was a good sign or not.

“So? How did it go?” he asked. Oki sighed heavily into the phone.

“Well, I talked to her,” he said, and Abe took another bite of a sandwich. “I - I told her how I feel, and - well, long story short, she said she’s interested in someone else.”

Abe’s stomach sank. “Sorry,” he said, picking at the last bite of bread he had with disinterest. “Well, how do you feel?”

“Crappy?” Oki said with a slight hysterical edge to his voice. He took in a deep breath to settle it from the sound of it, though, and when he spoke it was calmer. “But…also a lot better? I’m not sitting on a nervous ball of anxiety every time she comes in, I guess. So I imagine I’ll get over her pretty quickly, since all I really knew about her was what kind of books she liked, anyway.”

Abe didn’t say anything for a moment, absolutely, positively sure he was _not_ the right person for Oki to be calling right after having been shot down by his crush. “Well, hopefully that means you’ll get your magic back?”

Oki made a soft sound of agreement. “Yeah. I’m - it’s not back yet. I’m still feeling kind of useless at the moment. But hopefully, that’ll go away and I’ll be as good as new. Thanks, Abe. I really owe it to you.”

Abe pulled a face. “I didn’t really do anything.”

“You did, though. You talked me into talking to Shinooka-chan, and you asked her to come talk to me. Even if this didn’t work out - I feel like next time, maybe I can ask them to talk myself instead of having someone else do it for me.”

“Huh. Awesome,” Abe said, popping the last bite of his sandwich into his mouth. “Well, good luck, and let me know when you’re feeling better.”

“Yeah, I know. You want to check on Mihashi,” Oki said, and Abe felt a slight heat in his cheeks remembering the fact that his parents now both thought that he and Mihashi were _dating_. _Fuck_ but this was going to be awkward.

Abe got off the phone with Oki and sat there for a moment longer, then sighed and got up to make his way home. He spent the ride home in a bit of a daze, still kind of shocked that the events of the day had happened, and by the time he got home, he decided to dick around in his garden and try to clean it up a bit. He didn’t bother changing clothes, just swapped out his new shoes for the old mud bombs making a home in his laundry room, then got to work. He wrestled with the tomato cages some more, holding his breath while he hovered over them in case the poor little scrawny things decided to keel over in a final goodbye, then plucked the weeds out from around his herbs. (Or, at least, he hoped they were the weeds and not the herbs, wondering if his confusion was due to his lack of experience or because this Hanai person was missing.)

By the time he finished, it was almost dinner time and he was absolutely feeling the fact that he hadn’t hardly slept the night before. He went inside, throwing together a quick supper before he stripped and scrubbed down in the shower, deciding to forgo the bath in case it made him think about the fact that he’d lied to his mother about a fake relationship he definitely didn’t have.

When he woke the next morning, he was startled to realize just how quickly he’d fallen asleep when he’d climbed into bed. He got up, stretched, and got dressed after a quick shave, yawning as he started to head into his kitchen to make breakfast. Before he could make it, though, there was a ring on his doorbell and a knock, then footsteps heading off his porch and into the walkway. 

Curious, Abe opened his front door and saw a delivery truck driving off. He glanced down and saw a small box with his name and address on it, with a ridiculously adorable signature in the return address area that he worked out was Oki’s name. His heart shot into his throat, and he tore open the box right there on his front porch, uncaring, hoping, holding his breath - 

It was _gorgeous_. The stone was a jade black, deep and smooth to the touch. There was a card inside, and handwriting pretty enough to be called calligraphy instructed him to _Say hello to Mihashi for me_. Abe let the smile cross his lips, and he pulled the stone out of the box, sliding it into his pocket and then heading straight for his back door. He pulled on his muddy shoes, jogged lightly through his garden all the way to the back gate, where he hesitated for just a moment. He looked over his shoulder, a stroke of fear lingering in his chest when he remembered the panic attack he’d had the first time he’d done this by himself, when he’d become ensnared in the magical traps and almost lost himself. Mihashi wouldn’t be coming to save him, this time.

_Mihashi_. 

The thought of him alone had Abe walking through his gate, closing it behind him and slipping into the trees as he had before. Just like before, his home disappeared from view almost immediately, lost to him as he pressed onwards towards Mihashi’s home. He passed familiar trees, a bush he recognized, a set of flowers clinging to what little sunlight was making its way to their petals. Then, he found the creek, and hopped over, heart in his throat as he kept pushing, steps becoming faster and surer until finally, he froze, breath taken away when before him was a little home in a tree, part of the nature and stunningly Mihashi’s. 

“Mihashi,” Abe whispered, then he called more loudly, “Mihashi!”

He didn’t get an answer, so he stepped closer, hoping there were no other magical traps he’d have to worry about. He inhaled and caught the scent of a woodfire burning, and then, in a flurry of motion, Mihashi’s familiar flew into Abe’s face, chirping delightedly at him and nipping affectionately at his nose.

“Hey, _hey_ , stop that,” Abe said, reaching up to try and catch it and watching as it flew higher away and seemed to laugh at him. He huffed, then knocked once at the door, opening it when he didn’t get an answer. “Mihashi? It’s me, Abe. Are you - ”

Abe cut himself off immediately when he saw something that stole his breath. Morning sun filtered in through the opening in the wall, rays dancing through golden hair and setting Mihashi’s eyelashes on fire. His freckles danced like stars, chest rising and falling with each breath. His hair was as soft as the moment itself, dust dancing in the sunbeam like pixie dust. 

Mihashi was… _beautiful._

Abe released the air he’d been holding, stepping closer to come to Mihashi’s bedside. He took a seat next to Mihashi, gingerly, hoping he wouldn’t disturb Mihashi’s rest. He looked better, a bit, but still pale, still a little like he could use another three days of this sleep. 

Without thinking, Abe found himself reaching a hand out, enchanted by the moment. His fingers caressed Mihashi’s temple, tucking some hair behind Mihashi’s ear before he traced the line of Mihashi’s jaw, down to lips that were barely parted. Abe warmed, staring at Mihashi’s lips and thinking, _wondering._

“Something cool,” Abe whispered to no one, closing his eyes and kicking off his shoes. He moved down to the floor, letting his arms cradle his head on the side of Mihashi’s bed, watching, counting each breath and taking each as the miracle that it felt like, bathing with him in an ocean of iridescent gold to a symphony of birds.

 

 


	6. them in the dark

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> chapter title from agnes obel 'familiar' which is, funny enough, on the to-be-released soundtrack for this fic. it'd spoil the ending if i shared it now ;)

 

It hadn’t been Abe’s intention to fall asleep, but apparently it had happened, considering he blinked awake some undetermined amount of time later with numb legs and a smudge of drool on his forearm. Wiping the back of his arm across his mouth to clear the latter, Abe sat up, reorienting himself in the sparkling organic world of Mihashi’s tree home.

Mihashi was still sleeping in the beam of sunlight, though he had curled a little closer, fingers mere centimeters from Abe’s. Abe swallowed thickly, pushing down the desire to reach out and curl their hands together before he stood, shaking the blood back down to his feet. Then, he stared at the wall, frowning a bit as the muddied remains of a dream pooled just behind his reach. He remembered… darkness? And a huge cat, smaller than a lion but much larger than the one his neighbor growing up had kept, warming itself in the window. 

Oddest still was the fact that he remembered any of it at all, he thought, glancing around Mihashi’s home to try and pass the time. He was never one to really remember his dreams, especially not with any kind of detail. Abe pulled open one of the tiny drawers on the jewelry box-looking thing sitting atop the counter, glancing down at what looked like a clump of dried grass. He leaned down to sniff it, shrugging lightly to himself when he got little more than an herbal whiff. He closed it, then opened another one, squinting down at a pinch of blue flowers. He plucked one out between two fingers, twisting it around to get a good look before he put it back inside before it blew up in his face or something.

Deciding that it probably wasn’t the best idea to go poking around in a witch’s herb collection, Abe stepped away, looking at all the mismatched cups in Mihashi’s little cupboard, a small collection of plates, a handful of utensils… enough for a service of four, maybe. He glanced at Mihashi, wondering if he got many visitors. Izumi seemed to be good friends with him, and Sakaeguchi was apparently very close, as well. Definitely no humans, though, he thought, eyes rolling unconsciously at how bizarre Mihashi always acted around them.

Abe poked around a bit more before he sighed and decided that this was probably a huge waste of his time. He thought about tidying up a bit, but he wasn’t sure what he could touch and what would bite him if he tried. Plus, he didn’t want to take any chances that he’d wake Mihashi up. He tip toed back over to Mihashi’s bed, a fierce protectiveness gripping his chest out of nowhere as he stood there. He closed his eyes against the wash of it over him, then opened them again, looking around to see if he could see at least a piece of paper so he could leave a note. 

He managed to find one after a few minutes, jotting down a quick _stopped by and you were sleeping. come to my house if you feel up to it - Abe_ and tucking a corner of it underneath a teacup on the table. Hopefully, Mihashi would see it and his familiar wouldn’t eat it or something. Then, with a sigh and one last long look at Mihashi’s sleeping form, Abe opened Mihashi’s front door and stepped out just in time to collide with someone.

“Oof!” a voice said, and Abe jerked back, staring incredulously at the tiny figure in front of him. Well, tiny was maybe a bit of an exaggeration, but… not _much_ of one. “Whoa! Who’re you? Wait - are you _human?!”_

Abe scowled. “Yes? And keep it down. Mihashi’s sleeping.”

The guy - a witch, almost certainly, Abe thought - stared at him with wide cinnamon eyes for a few seconds, then tilted his head. “You know Mihashi and you’re here, so you must know about us, then. I’m Tajima Yuuichirou.”

“Soul witch,” Abe said, remembering his list. Tajima’s eyes lit up and a grin slashed his face.

“Wow! You really know a lot, huh?” he said, and then his face grew a little more serious. “Hey, hey, have you seen a really tall bald guy? He’s really hot and really bossy.”

_Looking for Hanai_ , Oki had told him. “No, I haven’t seen him, but I wouldn’t have known if I had,” he answered. Tajima visibly deflated, but he perked right back up and stood on his tip toes to try and glance over Abe’s shoulder. 

“You said he’s sleeping? _Still_? Geez, I came over last night to have dinner with him but he was all passed out and drooling,” Tajima said, and Abe frowned at that, remembering how he’d sent Mihashi home not too far off from a normal dinner time. He must have come straight home and passed out, then, he thought, staring off to the side and racking his brain for _something_ he could do.

“I thought he’d be better if another witch got fixed,” Abe said, crossing his arms, “but Oki regained his powers yesterday and Mihashi’s still sleeping.”

Tajima jumped, staring at Abe with wide eyes. “You _fixed_ Oki?! Wait, then you must have been the one to help Nishihiro, too! Man, I’m getting seriously left behind here!” He then reached out, face serious as his tone and grip tight on Abe’s hands. “Please, help me find Hanai!”

Finding Hanai would solve Tajima’s problem, Abe thought, then it would be simple to ask Hanai what _his_ problem was and be on the road to fixing _that_. Two witches, boom. Mihashi would be better in _no_ time. “Yeah, sure. When was the last time you saw him?”

Tajima thrust a fist into the air, then tapped a finger to the side of his jaw as he rocked on his feet. “Probably a few months ago? We ate breakfast like always, had a quickie in the shower, and he yelled at me for almost making him slip with that stupidly hot annoyed face he gets, and then he stormed out all pouty like saying he was going to do some shopping, but he never came back.” 

That was… a lot more detail than he really needed, Abe thought, cringing. But, maybe not. “Do you think maybe he was more upset than you thought?” Abe asked, silently wondering if after this much couples’ counseling Saitama Network would give him his own show and he could retire to a life of nothing but baseball games on television.

“Me ’n Hanai aren’t like that,” Tajima said. “When you’ve been together as long as we have, you pick lots of little fights but you don’t get into big ones ‘cept every century or so. Or, well, _we_ haven’t. I guess Nishihiro and Izumi kinda broke that rule.”

Silence filled Abe’s ears for a second at the sheer amount of witch drama that had just been dropped on him. He reminded himself to breathe, that yes, he really was trying to solve real issues and he wasn’t being pranked on television, and that no, this really wasn’t the weirdest shit he’d even heard from these people to date.

“Centuries?” he repeated, and Tajima’s head tilted, reminding Abe of an intrigued dog.

“Of course! Didn’t Mihashi tell you?”

Abe’s teeth gritted together. “He failed to mention that.”

“Huh. Yeah, we’re like, super old,” Tajima said, arms swinging around. While Abe was trying to decide if he really wanted to push that, deciding that he definitely _didn’t_ want to go into what was apparently drama between Nishihiro and Izumi, Tajima interrupted his thoughts with, “So, Hanai. Think you can find him?”

“I’ll definitely try,” Abe said, “though I’m not really sure what I can do that you can’t.”

Tajima gave him a huge smile at that. “Don’t underestimate the power of humans. Momokan always told us that humans have some of the most powerful magic of all!”

“Momokan?” Abe said, thinking back to his list and yeah, no. That was a new name. “Who’s Momokan?”

As if suddenly stricken, Tajima stilled, face frozen in a smile but somehow definitely less jubilant. “Ah, well, that’s not important,” he said, glancing to the side before clapping his hands once. “So, I guess you were leaving then, huh? We’ll get on our way too and help you find Hanai. Mihashi has my phone number, so call me if you find him, okay? Tell him I’m super sorry about the soap, I _really_ didn’t mean to drop it and make the tile slippery, and I promise I’ll take the trash out on time for a year if he just comes home.”

Tajima then whistled loudly, causing a large chocolate labrador to come bouncing out of where it had been digging in Mihashi’s garden. His familiar, Abe assumed. Tajima sighed at the sight of it, brushing the dirt off its legs and then the two of them jaunted off, scampering back into the woods, leaving Abe behind with more new questions than old ones he’d gotten answered. 

Abe looked to Mihashi’s garden and the huge hole Tajima’s familiar had left, wondering if he should try and fix it for the poor sleeping witch before he walked over and noticed a similar hole not too far down the patch, covered in herbs. Ah. Not an infrequent occurrence, then. He shook his head, turning and starting back out towards his home once more now that there wasn’t a short witch between him and his yard.

It was only a few minutes before he emerged from the forest, his chest releasing a tight coil of tension he hadn’t even been conscious of at the sight of his home. He exhaled, reaching into his pocket and wrapping his fingers around the stone Oki had enchanted for him gratefully. It had warmed from sitting in his pocket, but it was otherwise unremarkable for the fact that it had just save Abe from getting caught in a web of spells and wards once more.

Abe stepped into his garden through the back gate, shutting it behind him and overlooking the hot mess that surrounded him. His plants were still sad and pathetic looking, the tomato cages all arching in different directions over tomatoes that were far from needing them just yet, dirt mounded beneath the saddest herbs he’d ever seen, and the paths unclear and not marked as well as they could. Abe thought back to the books he’d seen in the library, to the brick-lined paths, the edger stones that clearly separated path from lawn from flowerbed, and he crossed his arms as he walked around, wondering if he should get some himself. 

With a sigh, Abe went into his kitchen and made himself a cup of coffee to drink while he watered his garden. He’d need to do that now, he thought, glancing up at the sky once he was outside again. The rain had been good for that much, at the very least. Even still, he felt his mind calming as he sipped his coffee, watching the water sprinkle from hose to ground, soaking into the dark soil and nourish his plants. It was oddly cathartic, knowing that he was doing something for the good of his garden, and when the last plant was sufficiently soaked, he turned off the hose and turned around to look at it again with a different eye.

…Yeah, no. It still looked like shit.

“How many of these assholes do I have to fix before this’ll look halfway decent?” he muttered to himself, eyes glancing over to the knee-tall grass he still hadn’t mowed because of the rain. Well, he could take care of _that_ , at the very least. And so he went inside to drop off his coffee cup, then back out, going into his garage to grab the lawnmower. 

He finally found it along the back wall, stuffed behind a rake and a couple of different types of shovels. It was an ancient beast of a reel push mower, but a glance at the blades showed that they were still sharp. Abe grabbed it and pushed it out of the garage, then towards the backyard.

Getting started _sucked_. The grass was probably too tall for the mower, and it took a few passes over each lane in the grass before it was short enough to do a more manicured approach. Even for as little grass as he had, he finished significantly later than he’d expected, covered in sweat and definitely wiped out. He pushed his lawnmower back into the garage and shut the door in gratitude, wiping his face with the hem of his shirt as he made his way to the backyard and - 

\- well. It looked _so_ much better, he thought, taking pause. The garden itself was still a miserable plot of witch-based mess, but the lawn itself looked good, lacking weeds and contained now to normal levels. He envisioned, suddenly, a patio there at the edge of the garden, maybe a fire pit and a couple of chairs, a line of fairy lights to keep the summer nights going into the dark. Then, he huffed out a breath of laughter as he glanced out towards the forest, wondering if there were actual literal fairy lights. He’d have to ask Mihashi.

Now hungry and tired, Abe went into his house, kicking off his muddy shoes in the laundry room and making his way straight to the bathroom. He was too filthy to wait to shower, instead deciding to get clean and _then_ attack the hole in his stomach. He scrubbed from head to toe, pulling on just a pair of shorts and a loose tee shirt before padding back into the kitchen. 

He decided on some scrambled eggs for dinner, mostly because it was the fanciest thing he knew how to make that would stick to his ribs, and also because it wasn’t too much of a pain in the ass to clean up after so long as he soaked the pan before going at it with a sponge. He knew there was a secret to having it not stick; he’d seen his mother’s pans, all non-eggy and easy to clean. Hell if he knew it, though. 

He cracked the eggs into the pan, fishing out a couple pieces of shell that went with, stirring them until they looked sort of mostly yellow with only a few bits of white here and there. Good enough. He then pinched in a bit of salt and kept stirring, scowling when sure enough, the egg started sticking to the bottom of the pan. He added in a handful of torn up sandwich meat, then sprinkled in a touch of cheese. That made it a horrendously sticky mess, but by the time it ended up on his plate, scraped off with the spatula as much as possible, it looked like dinner to him. He sat down on his table to eat, a little miffed he’d slept the morning away in Mihashi’s house and hadn’t managed to get too much done, but supposing he wouldn’t have slept if he hadn’t needed it.

By the time Abe finished, washed his dishes, and stripped back down for a nice soak in the bathtub before he crawled into bed, the night got away from him a bit. He soaked in his bath a little longer than usual, not coming out until he was pink all over and a little pruned in his fingers and toes. He pulled on his pajamas and climbed into bed, exhaling softly as he pulled up his sheet and closed his eyes. He lied there for a moment, waiting, but his body still refused to turn off. He huffed and rolled over, eyebrows furrowing when still, after a bit of time, he couldn’t fall asleep. His body was ready after having mowed the monster lawn, but his mind was whirring on nothing in particular.

Finally, Abe pushed back his sheet and got out of bed, knowing that it wouldn’t do him any good to lie there and stare at the back of his eyelids. He walked into the kitchen, taking his coffee cup from earlier in the day and washing it. He put it on the rack in the sink to dry, then sighed out, running a hand through his hair. He glanced up at the window, mind already tracking to Mihashi, only for his whole body to freeze in shock when he saw a giant cat sitting on the edge of his little cobblestone wall. 

Not just any giant cat - the giant cat from his dream.

“Oh shit,” Abe said, blinking once. The cat remained, eyes locked with his. He couldn’t make out more than its shape because of the deep darkness, but he knew, somehow, that this was the very same cat he’d dreamed of that morning. He took a step back, and the cat didn’t blink, so he stepped back again, then again, until he was in the hallway. He paused, then started back towards his bedroom, deciding he’d just crawl into bed and try to go to sleep again - 

Except when he turned into his bedroom, there in the wall of windows on his bedroom wall was the cat, sitting on his porch. 

Abe flinched back into the hall, back pressed to the wall and heart hammering in his throat. Fucking _shit._ He swallowed, feeling a beat of sweat down his spine as he stood, paralyzed, wondering what he should do. His phone was - shit, his phone was plugged in on his bedside table. And really, who was he going to call? The cops? Right. _Yes, 911, there’s a huge cat staring at me and because half my friends these days are witches I just know one of these assholes had something to do with it_. Izumi would probably just laugh until he dropped dead - He probably didn’t really know Oki well enough - He didn’t have Mihashi’s phone number and wouldn’t call him anyway, not when he’d looked about half dead the last time Abe had seen him - 

Then, as suddenly as if he’d jumped straight into an ice-cold lake, the thought it _won’t hurt me_ stunned him into stillness. He remained against the wall, back to the wall, but instead of terror clenching vice-tight on his gut, confusion swirled instead. He… he _knew_ the cat wouldn’t hurt him. Then, another revelation - _lynx_ the word came, as unbidden as if it had always been there, as if the knowledge had been inside of him the whole time. 

“Am I dreaming?" Abe asked aloud, pushing off the wall to walk back into his bedroom. The lynx was still sitting there, eyes locked with his own before they glanced at the sliding door next to where it was sitting. Abe looked at it as well, then walked over to it, hand resting on the lock before he slid it down, then opened the door. Stupidly, he stared at the lynx for a second, half expecting it to talk before he guessed his dream wasn’t _that_ bizarre. “What do you want?” he asked, watching as the lynx pushed inside with huge paws - _jesus_ , the thing came up to his hip - then sat in front of his dresser. 

It sat down, looking over its shoulder expectantly at him. He stared, then opened the drawer to see his pants folded up neatly inside. “You… want me to get dressed?” he asked, and the lynx flicked one ear as if amused by his inaction. He pulled on a pair of pants, then a shirt, and when the lynx pawed at his socks, he pulled on a pair of them, too. He shut his sliding door when the lynx walked out of his bedroom into the hall, following it through the kitchen and into the mudroom towards his shoes, but not before he snagged his phone from where it had been charging, just in case.

Once his boots were on his feet, the lynx looked at the back door, and Abe opened it, following the speckled animal out into his garden. It jumped onto the cobblestone wall, walking alongside him as he headed towards the gate, though when he came to a halt, it stopped as well. 

“Where are you going to take me?” he asked, looking to the lynx. It blinked at him, and Abe waited for some kind of answer to follow. It didn’t. His hand tightened on the fence gate, wondering if he should really be following some strange giant cat into the forest after dark, when Mihashi - and every other witch - had told him that it wasn’t safe. But the lynx stared at him, until Abe realized he had a choice. The lynx wasn’t going to _make_ him go through the gate. He was going to have to _choose_ to go through the gate.

“If it gets too weird, I’m coming right back,” he said, pushing open the fence and stepping outside the protection of his cobblestone garden. The lynx hopped down as soon as he took a single step through, taking off towards the forest, but not in a direction Abe had ever taken himself. Mihashi’s home was a little down the hill, straight back from his garden, but the lynx was heading towards the left, closer towards where Nishihiro lived by the riverside, further into the forest and further away from Nishiura. Further into the darkness. Abe reached into his pocket for the stone and tightened his fingers around it, swallowing thickly as he pressed into the tree line.

Almost immediately, darkness fell over him like a blanket, shutting him off from almost all light. The sliver of moon just beginning to peek through from the new moon did little to illuminate the path the lynx was taking, and Abe had to squint, quickly getting lost from the twists and turns they were taking. The stars glittered in the few swatches of night sky he could see, brighter than he’d ever seen in the city, darker maybe even than his own backyard. He didn’t watch for long, however, focused on following the lynx through the forest and into whatever maw it was taking him. 

He walked for what felt like hours, and Abe remembered after a while that Izumi had said time was broken here, that Mihashi had almost lost him to the pull of time on his human body. He slowed, a tendril of fear growing in his gut, and as if sensing it, the lynx slowed as well, looking over its shoulder to watch him with wide, guarded eyes. He stared at the tufts of its cheeks, then huffed out, taking another step forward. He was too deep in now to go back, and he didn’t doubt that the lynx wouldn’t lead him out. He’d have to follow it to see where it was leading and just hope someone at the other end could get him back home.

Abe walked, walked, walked, walked, deeper into the forest and deeper into the darkness, losing himself to the motion of walking until he took a step and went calf-deep into a puddle.

“Jesus - ” he cursed, only to glance down to see that it wasn’t quite a puddle he’d stepped in. It was more of a wet sponge of dirt, soft and filling with water only after he’d stepped in it. He frowned, looking around at his surroundings and not the lynx for the first time in a while, taking a few hesitant steps, until he froze in place and felt his stomach drop to his feet. 

_Swamp_.

“No, no, no,” he said, shaking his head. Mihashi had specifically said this place was bad - Nishihiro, he’d mentioned it too, and he couldn’t get Mihashi’s terrified face when he’d thought a fellow _witch_ had gone, let alone him, Abe, a mere _human_ \- 

_A little further_ , came the thought, unbidden in the back of his mind. Just a little further and he’d be where the lynx wanted to take him. But a little further was further into the swamp, past the place where he could turn around and _not_ be in its clench. He chewed his lower lip, looking to the lynx which was once again watching him carefully, then over his shoulder, past where lightning bugs were dancing along the edge of the water and flirting with the darkness around them, towards Mihashi, towards his home. He looked back to the lynx, to the swamp. Tajima had come here, looking for Hanai. He’d wanted to check it out, with Mihashi, yes, but he _had_ wanted to.

“A little further,” he agreed after a long hesitation, taking a slogging step forward, then another, his shoes sticking in the softness of the ground beneath them. 

The lynx turned back forwards, leading him deeper into the swamp, through more lightning bugs, sparse trees, until finally they reached what looked to be the edge of what could possibly be construed as _land_ and was definitely _water_. The lynx took a seat at the water’s edge, looking to Abe and waiting for him to catch up. He followed, looking around at the stagnant water and trees protruding, the organic smell of peat and foliage filling his nose. Then, he became aware of the hairs on his arms standing on edge, as well as the ones on the back of his neck. He wanted to scratch at them as unease filled his whole body, but he also didn’t dare do much more than breathe.

Then, the lynx stood next to him, and with a squick glance to Abe, it stretched out first one paw, then two, then three, four, repeating until Abe watched, incredulous, as the lynx walked on the surface of the water, each step causing a ripple that broke the surface of the water but didn’t make it wet. It turned, watching Abe, the same way it had this whole time, and oh, _oh,_ the fucking cat wanted him to _walk on water._

“I’m not a witch,” he hissed, “I can’t walk on water, okay?!”

_Not with that attitude_ , came the thought in his mind, but unlike before, it was clearer in his mind, clearer, yet slowly becoming distinguishable from his own thoughts. Whereas before, it felt like it was his own thought, now, it felt closer to the lynx, closer yet to an other he had not met. _Would you like to know how magic works?_

Unease shot through Abe like a bullet. Here he was in an evil swamp, following some creature in the middle of the night, and it was offering to teach him how to use magic. Yeah, he’d seen enough anime to know this was bullshit. “Okay, I said I was going to go home when this got too weird, and I think I just hit that point,” he announced, but as soon as he finished saying that, laughter filled the air around him. 

_I miss humans,_ the disembodied voice said, and a flash of green light appeared for a split second over the water in the corner of Abe’s eyes. He glanced out to it, wondering if it had been a will-o’-wisp or something more sinister. _Someday, I’ll let the others tell you about me. For now, you have work to do, Abe Takaya._

“‘Let them’?” Abe repeated, narrowing his eyes at the lynx since it sort of felt like the voice was coming from it, even though it also felt like it was coming from… the swamp itself. 

_If you know you can walk on the water, you will walk on it,_ the lynx-not-lynx answer came to his unspoken question.

“My knowledge that I can’t walk on water is a little deeper than that,” Abe said, just as the hairs on the back of his neck started to rise again. This time, it reminded him of the night he met Izumi in the observatory, looking out into the woods with an unnamed oppressive fear. “It would help if you’d stop the creepy swamp bullshit.”

_That is not my doing,_ the lynx’s answer came, turning to face Abe. _You must choose soon. It is coming._

Once again, just like that night, Abe looked over his shoulder into the inky darkness of the trees behind him and felt an intense fear grip his stomach tight. He whipped his head back around to the lynx, who was sitting as silently as ever, watching him from where it was still standing in the middle of the waters. “What is it?” he asked, though a small piece of him wanted to forget the witches, forget the swamp, turn around and go home to forget absolutely everything.

_The nine you know… Their powers together. What do you call it?_

Abe looked back over his shoulder, heart rate starting to kick to an uncomfortable level as his legs started to shake with the need to move and more than a little panicked that the stupid swamp cat wasn’t helping him. The nine he knew…? Witches, the nine witches - their powers together? He closed his eyes to try and focus against the swallowing fear pressing in on him from behind, thinking about their powers. Plants, rain, space, time, death - a cycle of plant birth and death and the things needed for that to happen? What would that be called?

Abe’s eyes snapped open. “A garden?” he asked, and the lynx’s ear flicked once. Just as he was wondering if he’d answered the stupid riddle correctly, the voice bubbled up again from the bottom of the swamp.

_The fear you feel… is from the Night._

“The Night?” he asked, and as soon as he’d put the words to air from his lips, a rush of black terror blew over him like a hurricane. His arms wrapped around his chest as he clutched himself, feeling his back hunch as his eyes clenched shut and his whole body shook to the point of pain. Then, teeth gritting, he looked to the lynx, sitting still atop the water. He tore his fingers away from his biceps, clenched them at his sides, and took a step.

Abe stared at the lynx, swallowing past the unnamed terror that forced tears to his eyes, taking a step, then another, another, each heavy and tearing at his leg muscles, taking an age of the earth from movement to movement, until finally, he was standing on top of the water next to the lynx, covered in sweat and exhausted. 

_You have chosen,_ the voice said, and here, in the middle of the swamp, Abe could hear the voice even more clearly than before. It was still coming from the lynx, but it wasn’t the lynx - it was a woman’s voice, muffled, as if through glass, and in a stroke of wonder, Abe realized that the lynx must be a witch’s familiar. He looked to it, watched as it glanced at him once, then padded across the surface of the water as if nothing had happened. 

“Wait - what’s - What’s - ” Abe clamped his mouth shut, terrified to speak the name of the fear he’d felt in case it summoned it to him again. 

_We will speak again, Abe Takaya,_ the woman said, and the knowledge that yes, he would, sank into Abe’s bones as if he were a time witch himself and had already done so. Abe swallowed thickly, then pressed on, walking across the surface of the water until he was finally at the other edge of the swamp, back on solid ground. 

He half expected the lynx to abandon him, so he was surprised when it glanced at him with the same _come on_ look in its eyes that it had had since he’d first seen it on his cobblestone wall. He took a moment to breathe, hands holding onto his knees as he hunched over and tried to reboot himself from the combination of supernatural terror and the fact that he’d just _walked on a fucking lake._ The further he got from the swamp, however, the more he felt like the lynx wasn’t the one who had been speaking with him after all, and the more certain he was that it was a witch’s familiar. 

After what felt like another hour of walking, Abe caught the smell of wood burning. It tickled his nose, and for a second, he was scared there was a forest fire, though after a moment more, he saw what looked like a cabin settled in the trees. There was a long driveway up to the front with a normal looking car sitting in front of a detached garage, and as Abe stepped onto the driveway out of the forest, he looked up to the sky and saw that the moon wasn’t as high into the night sky as it had been when he’d left his home.

“Did… I just go back in time?” he asked the lynx, though when he turned around, it was nowhere to be seen. He craned his neck, looking all over, but much to his annoyance, the stupid thing had apparently run off. He huffed, looking towards the cabin and stuffing his hands in his pockets, pulling his phone out to look down at his phone. Sure enough, it was just shy a perfectly respectable seven in the evening, despite the fact that he’d definitely gone to bed at no earlier than midnight. Then, another possibility was that he’d gone _forward_ in time… though the thought of having lost a day was even worse, especially considering he’d left a note for Mihashi to come to his house. The thought that Mihashi would have come to his home and been waiting for him to come home - he clenched a fist in frustration, putting that energy into thinking of creative curses for the stupid lynx that had led him here and into the footsteps that carried him closer to the door. He’d just - knock and ask for directions.

Abe stepped up the front porch and rang the doorbell, taking a step away from the door so he wouldn’t be too close just in case this was a house of horrors or something. He honestly wouldn’t put it past the stupid fur ball that led him here. 

Instead, the door swung open to reveal… a handsome, tall bald guy. 

“Can I help you?” he asked, and Abe gaped, because _no._

“Hanai?!” he asked, and the guy blinked once, then laughed. 

“Uh, no,” he said, obviously very confused. Jesus, how many tall hot bald dudes were running around this town? “I’m Suyama. You are…?” 

He wasn’t Hanai, but, Abe thought with a clenched fist, he _was_ a witch. “I’m Abe. I’m helping Tajima look for Hanai and this stupid cat led me here.” Abe dropped the reference to the cat, hoping that he’d get confirmation for just whose familiar it was.

“Stupid cat?” Suyama repeated, then, “The only cat familiar I know of is Yuuto’s, and I can promise you that cat has never been outside of his sight for more than five minutes. He spoils her beyond belief.” Abe scowled, ignoring how Suyama seemed to be studying him thoughtfully. “You’re definitely human, but you said you’re helping Tajima look for Hanai?”

“It’s all Izumi’s fault,” Abe said, and without anything more beyond a gentle sigh, Suyama stepped to the side and let Abe in. 

“I’m… actually really glad you came,” Suyama said, guiding Abe though a foyer, a formal living room, into a surprisingly gourmet kitchen for a home that looked as old as it did. “You see, you being a human and not a witch is actually quite helpful, considering what happened.”

“What… happened?” Abe repeated. Suyama nodded, then opened the fridge and pulled out a little box. Abe lifted an eyebrow as Suyama very gently pulled the top off the box, and then, inside, on a bed of soft paper towels, was a single egg. 

“This… is Hanai,” Suyama said. 

Abe stared at him, then looked down to the egg. “Hanai… is in an egg.”

“Ah, no,” Suyama said. “Hanai… _is_ the egg.”

Absolute silence filled the room, until there was a tiny yet furious voice that came down from the box. 

“ _Suyama! I told you not to tell the others under any circumstances!”_ the egg yelled, and oh, fucking shit, Abe realized it had a _face_. It had little stick arms and legs, as if it was a little drawing. 

“I haven’t told any other witch,” Suyama said smugly. “Abe-san here is a human.”

The egg whipped around, leveling is surly glare on Abe, who merely stared back in absolute shock. This egg was glaring at him. “ _You! Who are you?! How did you get here?!_ ”

“The egg is talking to me,” Abe said stupidly. Yep, he was definitely dreaming. Walking on lakes, talking to an egg - he’d wake up in a second to a nice mowed lawn and a hot cup of coffee while he watered his plants. God, he couldn’t wait.

_“I’m not an egg!”_

“You are literally an egg,” Abe pointed out. Hanai’s little stick-figure arm from where he’d been pointing at Abe withered, and he sat down, clutching his… head? in his hands. 

_“God, I’m still an egg,_ ” he said. 

“So… Hanai is an egg, and as soon as I found him, he commanded me not to tell any of the other witches since he was embarrassed, so poor Tajima’s been running around looking for him,” Suyama explained. “Of course, there’s really no reason for him not to tell them what happened, but he just won’t listen.”

“This is… really stupid,” Abe said, exhaling sharply and looking down at Hanai. The poor guy looked miserable, but all it took was one thought of Mihashi’s sunken face for the pity to burn to anger. “You know, Mihashi’s really suffering because you _idiots_ can’t get your magic together. Tell Tajima what happened so he can put his head back on straight!” 

Hanai looked up at Abe and opened his mouth to say something, but then he withered again, looking positively morose. _“The thing is, I don’t really know what happened,_ ” he said, his tiny little voice not really inspiring any authority but apparently, it had been good enough for Suyama. Abe wondered if he’d get in trouble for scrambling him. _“I’d left to go get some groceries at the pre-dawn sale, and the next thing I knew, I was in the forest as an egg._ ” 

“So… you don’t know how to fix it,” Abe said. Hanai shook his head via shaking his whole egg body, and Suyama sighed despondently as well. 

“I’ve looked in every piece of literature we have from over the years, but I can’t find anything about it,” he said. “To make matters worse, he’s so stubborn, he won’t let me ask the others about it.” Suyama looked to Abe. “I think he might be worried that they’ll go into the forest looking for answers, and, well… that’s not the best of ideas right now.”

Abe stared at him, remembering his experience at the swamp and just outside the observatory. He decided to take a small gamble, just like he had with Oki. “Is it because of the Night?”

Suyama’s face paled, and Hanai slowly stood up, pointing a finger at Abe. _“Where did you hear that name?”_ he asked, his tinny voice suddenly a lot more authoritative than it had been before. _“You shouldn’t know about that. Humans aren’t supposed to know about that.”_

“Yeah, well, I’m learning a lot I’m not supposed to in order to fix you people,” Abe said, though he wanted to tell them, just so he could maybe get more information about the swamp and the lynx that had led him here. “In any case, I’m going to tell Tajima you’re here so he can stop freaking out.”

_“N-No!”_

“Yep,” Abe said, popping the ‘p’ as he pulled out his phone. He scrolled through his phone’s contact list, only to groan when he remembered that Tajima hadn’t actually given him his phone number, just said that Mihashi had it, and he still didn’t have Mihashi’s phone number any more _now_ than he had when he’d been terrorized by the lynx in his house. He couldn’t ask them for either Tajima or Mihashi’s numbers, though, since Hanai wouldn’t give it to him and he’d tell Suyama not to, and it appeared as though Hanai’s powers worked over witches but _not_ humans. 

With a huff, he decided to put his faith in Izumi, shooting him a text that said _Tell Mihashi I found Hanai. He’s at Suyama’s house. Also tell Tajima so that idiot can stop worrying. We may have a problem though._

Abe stuck his phone back into his pocket, looking to see Hanai practically vibrating with anger and mortification at him. “This is for your own good,” he said, and Hanai shot him the filthiest, nastiest look Abe had ever received from an egg. He then looked to Suyama, opening his mouth to ask if he could get some directions back to Nishiura, or maybe even better a ride, when suddenly he realized he was listing off to one side. 

“W-Whoa, are you okay?!” Suyama said, hands reaching out to grab at Abe’s shoulders. Abe blinked his eyes quickly, hand pressed against the counter as he tried to figure out what the hell was wrong with him. He wasn’t dizzy, didn’t feel sick, but he’d definitely just almost collapsed. “A-Abe-san?!” 

Abe’s gaze looked out the window, where he locked gazes with the lynx. His breath caught in his throat, and to the ticking of a cuckoo clock, he closed his eyes and finally fell.

 

 


End file.
